St Paul’s – a poem by Mark Engineer

In the July heatwave of 2022 I was working near St Paul’s. As I left the tube station and made my way to the office, I began to feel terribly anxious. The sun was remorseless and it was only 8 o’clock. It wasn’t meant to get this hot in England, ever. It felt like the world was being flayed alive. And yet everyone else seemed to be carrying on as normal. I felt very afraid, and utterly alone.

This feeling of aloneness – that you’re the only sane person in an insane world, that everyone else is whistling while we’re going down to hell – is a big part of climate anxiety. It isn’t true, of course. Lots of us think and worry about this stuff.

And yet we so seldom talk about it. What’s more, this fear and denial is understood and weaponised by those who would prefer to keep the status quo.

It felt too late, for me, on that July day, over three years ago. I don’t actually believe it is too late, even now. But one day, if we persist with our denial, it will be.

St Paul’s

Written in the July heatwave of 2022

As, reluctant, I approach it
With Ludgate-heavy tread,
Past an empty shop,
Dark windows streaked with paint,
Over a sea of undone faces,
Of Costa-clutching corpses,
The sun flays the sky
Behind some former-day saint.
Lofted, pineapples gleam
(Like a great bird’s eye, dear!)
Filled with human, dying dreams
And dusty old ideals.
A great bird’s idea
Of human prosperity –
And ugly, modern glees
Of jackboots,
Panamas,
And fifteen kinds of coffee.

***

As one manmade dome
Bakes beneath another,
A bulb of dead white hopes
Under a bulb of newborn dread,
This homespun sun sings
A black song for humanity
And assaults the hidebound Earth
With a microwave ferocity,
All saints, new and old
Cannot help us now
And nor can Paternoster
Who, just around the corner
Where food huts cluster,
Drives his herd of bonded goats
To the local muster,
In a hanging garden
Where the animals scream.

***

They’re lifting up a lesser god
Behind their wooden hoardings
Raise us up, O Lord!
Are farther hoo-hah din?
Hollowed be our souls,
By the sound of drills and cranes,
Of girders being shifted,
Shrivelled be our souls,
By these sourmetal refrains
(And no one being lifted.)
O Rapture!
Eight Roads I see
And all leading down to Hell.
God’s a spent case,
An empty space,
A hollow shell – 
(Ack-ack) –
Now here’s the smooth black
Of the automated gate;
The huntsman’s eye falls on me –
Go back! I cry.
Too late.

Photo: Walkerssk, Pixabay