The weather was starting to worry me,
The days were hot and the nights like ice,
The winds were gusting and hailstones
Were battering down on the roof, like rice.
Marie was listless and wandered about
She wouldn’t get dressed until way past noon,
She’d toss and turn in her sleep, and shout:
‘The man with the beard will be coming soon!’

I didn’t know what she had meant by that
I couldn’t be bothered to ask her why,
She said she soon had a sense of doom
The way of the world was passing by.
We stood outside on a starless night
And she pointed up to a cloud on high,
‘I saw a hand in the dawning light
That plucked each star from the morning sky!’

I slept but fitfully after that
My dreams were troubled by what she’d said,
They’d taken the blue from the morning sky
Had withered and rolled up the garden bed.
He’d come to ruin the countryside
Put all the trees in a cardboard box,
Took all the daisies and all the weeds
And ripped them out with the hollyhocks.

While strange marauders wandered the land
And one-eyed women disturbed my head,
They bred like rabbits and grains of sand,
‘We’re here to do what our masters said!’
The seas were suddenly drained and gone
All was that was left was a dusty plain
‘The earth is finished,’ a voice then said,
All I could see was a Moon terrain.

Then lightning crackled over our heads
And thunder rolled like a toll of doom,
I lay awake in my narrow bed
And watched Marie, who stood in the gloom.
‘A new Dark Age has begun tonight,
He said that he’d given us all he had,
Would try again when the time was right,
But packed the Moon in his travelling bag.’

David Lewis Paget