Mare Horribilis, Mare Vitae:

It is a mournful silver Moon, no smile on her face, all her tears

Spent long and long ago, reluctantly cutting through her endless

Course, pulling soft on the Earth’s blighted blanket of the seas. 

No mermen and maids swim where they had dwelled in times

Of magic; no strands of hair float, betraying their presence.

No fishes, no sharks, dolphins, turtles or great whales are there. 

No little sea horses canter proudly, heads held high, around

Underwater courses, an audience of excited shrimp, and stolid,

Wide-eyed groupers enthralled by the show, cheering them on.

Slime, oil and tar slick the surface, a vomited memo from man.

Reluctant lunar fingers recoil in deep, despairing and growing

Disgust as they touch her old friend’s sickly, putrescent shroud.

Across the planet little breathing can be heard now, and that all

Gasping, rasping in search of the rare and thin traces of oxygen,

As the fetid phytoplankton rot, and dying algal blooms form  

Stinking mats, sluggishly riding the lurching, ponderous waves,

The very last and largest of the surfers unseen, and their stench

No longer assailing and abusing long gone olfactory nerves.

Standing like so many rotting teeth, some almost submerged,

On the water’s edge and along new, despoiled and ragged shore

Lines are blackened tree stumps stripped bare by acid rain.

Stark white bones of beasts lie, carelessly scattered, making a

Tragic, un-mourned mosaic of piano keys designed by a mad,

Uncaring deviant deity, left for harsh winds and rains to play. 

Streams which ran to the rivers, to the lakes, to the seas, once

Alive and then choked by dead fishes, run free of impediment.

Those dead-eyed folk who remain have long ago ceased to find

Succour in visiting once charmed faery woods, meadows and

Wandering, hallowed country parks, now all metamorphosed

Into reeking charnel houses, even echoes of their beauty lost.   

Where life had flourished, thrived, now scrub grasses, moss and

Small shrubs reign supreme, and that supremacy to be short

Lived, as with those few tenacious insects and subterranean

Dwellers still finding niches where they survive – for now.

No longer is the whir of wings, the bee’s hum or any bird song

Heard, though there are precious few now to hear it, and

Those too busy scratching about to stay alive to have noticed or

Appreciated it, or if they had, only as a possible source of food. 

No chorus at dawn, no mellifluous, haunting calls of waking

Owls at dusk; no bats throw their bodies, twisting, lunging,

Spiralling through the air, now the killer of that which had

Helped to sustain them, the once dancing skies purged of life. 

Cancers brought low the billions, no respecter of any genus. 

Herbivores suffered least, dying first.  Cannibalism became a

Norm, first with the dead but then with less discrimination, as

Many creatures slipped, slow or fast, into a depraved savagery,

Including those who in their over-weaning arrogance and pride

Destroyed the planet they relied on for life and are about to

Depart with no trace of honour or dignity, starved as all others,

The lowly beasts, made equal as a thick, greasy mist smothers

The land they had loved, foul toxic rain with berserker winds

Raping the skies.  Has God, weeping turned her eyes elsewhere?

In the city some hang on a little longer, scavengers fighting,

Killing for rusty cans of prunes and such delights, too tired to

See the beauty now offered in the cold arms of Sergeant Death.

The meek have not inherited the Earth; they are the lucky ones.

 

The Moon’s dejected light catches cockroaches scuttling in the

Shadows, their success at last completed in their long running,

Bitter battle for dominance with rats, but if they now wish to

Revel, sing and dance in strange cockroach ways, their victory

Exultance will be short, soon to turn to despairing ululations.

Now picture this; the strange, scratching peace is broken by a

Clap of thunder, harbinger for the on-coming deluge of rain. 

The few living things left to do so desperately make for refuge,

Away from its lashing whip and careless, corrosive harsh caress. 

Even the perverse plant life that remains, now grows away from

Light, shunning the sickly sun’s guileful rays, that sly quisling

In the Dealing of Death, moving to spots with more of shelter. 

The mucus-sea slides its way through streets, doorways and

Windows long shattered, forcing itself and its law upon a land

Now not even a shadow of what it was; a sick, and corrupted,

Psychotic; an amoral triumphant killer, dealing slow, deliberate,

Painful death to all those who had used and abused her so.

Suddenly an artificial light lacerates the perilous darkness,

Stunning the Moon and sending the few denizens left to dwell

In the filthy remnant scum of civilisation, scuttling back,

Begging the lifesaving shadows to draw them further in. 

Tearless Selene watches as a small craft comes to life, exiting

The feculence of the pitiful, betraying promise of the city to

Glide silently, with surreal certainty in an uncertain world,

Its bizarre, unlikely destination the noxious water, where it

Continues, without pause, on its way and then submerges.

Steadily the craft creeps down through slime, the few fronds

Of dying plants and fluid fields of death towards the depths,

And with time safely docks within a titanic artificial sea-cavern. 

Three crew exit and make their way slowly through water filled

Tunnels to a control room where, exhausted but relieved, they

Wait to be debriefed, minds a deluge of data and new certainty.

The Leader nods as they sign their report.  The planet is on the

Brink of being unable to maintain life forms requiring oxygen. 

Certainly, deoxygenation of the sea is coming to levels which,

Within a few full circuits of the local star, will give conditions

Ideal to allow the colonists to be woken from their centuries of

Cryogenic sleep and be shuttled down from the mother-ships

To take full possession of this convivial, perfect and truly

God-given planet.  Through all their generations of travel, the

Dangers, their travails, fears and woeful losses, they had never

Dared dream in their wildest dreams of finding such a Paradise.