All Is Lost

An elegy

In a basin, lent from long forgotten deeds- 

where kings once claimed, and by unheeded law belonged-

a verdant valley.

 

So far is it beyond 'apocalypse'- 

which ancient tongues prepend to this imagined date a 'post',

 

And closer to 'utopia', that never knew a land before,

Than it is 'destruction' beyond which augurs cannot see

when they call the end 'the end'.

 

Its overflowing minds may one day come to fear imagined ends,

And consider its beginning 'simple life',

And claim to stretch beyond imagined space and time

both fore and aft,

And in this honest claim forget their ancestor

save one intrusive mark:

 

Beneath the roots of sturdy trees, 

With branches thick and heavy leaves,

Is etched in rusted metal bent

by knife that untold ages spent,

And in a cry not understood

by life never imagined hence, the words:

"all is lost".

Author's Note

Author's Note:
This poem is my response to Ozymandias. While it echoes Shelley aesthetically, it offers a philosophical alternative: where Shelley warns of the decadence of human vanity and power, my poem stretches further out in time, and seeks something more gentle and intimate.
It imagines a world we might call post apocalyptic- though perhaps only if we lack the imagination to call it anything else. This world has long since moved past its collapse; it is a verdant Beulah, home to life so far removed from us that it cannot recall its ancestry- cannot imagine that its current paradise was ever called the end of anything.
To them, the so-called end of the world is a non-event, not even held in myth- forgotten altogether.
And buried with the myth, deep beneath the root and soil, lies a single rusted metal slab. Etched into it, in a language no thinking creature could decipher, written by a form of life none living can- or need- remember, are the words: 'all is lost'.
As we cannot allow for anything beyond our end, so too can they not conceive of anything before their birth. Their consciousness emerged in a land which must- before- have been wild and untamed. Their creation myth will say that before it, there was nothing.
The cities they will build will always stand, and if they fall, they too will claim that 'all is lost'.

Reviews

[carl]

Interesting as I read this before your added note I immediately thought of Ozymandias ( one of my favorites ) and I enjoyed your take on a time beyond recognition of an apocalypse. Have you ever heard of A Canticle for Leibowitz if not you might enjoy it. Your piece also makes me wonder at the understanding held by people of origin - I've read quite a bit about the first people ( I know, how can we know that, but ... ) of the so called Americas in a book 1491 and wonder how they perceived themselves, the past, the future, or if they did at all. Your piece is really an intriguing and interesting write - well done - carl