End of the World The wind blows from the east bringing an acid hail that falls from the leaden sky. The air stutters tic tic tic tic, rattle of death-watch beetle on sad slate roofs. The swan of Avon dies a syncopated death. Ashes big as snowflakes fall, a black frost grips July by the throat. We pull the velvet curtains tight over the dawn, and shiver by empty grates. The household gods have vanished, no one remembers quite when. Poppies and corncockle have long been forgotten here, like the boys who died in Flanders, their name erased by a late frost which clipped the village cross. Spring lapped the fields in arsenic green, the oaks died this year. On every green hill mourners stand, and weep for The Last Of England.
- Derek Jarman