Shall we step outside for a swim
in this ocean of artificial light?
Aren’t the lamppost legions lining the streets
the bioluminescence of the night?
Shall we take a stroll through the gardens,
through the forest of wire and twisted metal,
and admire how the cool autumn winds
waltz with these polythene petals?

The old and the new are already married,
Tied to the mast of time’s great voyager.
And beneath their most brilliant disguise
Lies the truest and most perfect reflection.
What does it matter in the sagas and songs
If now there’s a tower where once a tree stood?
A tree is nothing but a pillar of bark
Their lofty branches, girders of wood.
The grey and the green, the towers and trees,
Former is shunned, yet the latter is lost.
Hemlock and arsenic both send you down
And of granite and concrete, are either so soft?


Time marches on and leaves no-one behind.
It’s the ceaseless march of all of mankind.
If the end seems impending, and the path draped in black
To the darkness you go, there is no turning back.
This pilgrimage is a bitter prescription
And our sour rejection is sorely reflected
that legacies past are lauded and loved
While modernity’s beauty lies cold and neglected.
On the railway tracks we are hurtling down
Laid each day by the hands of history
We cannot turn back or regret our mistakes
Or the careless advances we were perceived to make.
While we grasp at the memories, and skeletal remains,
With our rueful yearning that's becoming so desperate
The fact remains, ‘till the end of our days
There's no better, or worse, there is only different.
There is no behind, there is only beyond.
The passing of past lays the road for the new.