Robert M

Robert M. Simmons

New Release

A Requiem for the Age of Man

While high above the mortal zone

the sun in perfect splendor shone,

the world below in ruins lay

from all the wrongs of yesterday

when nature’s bounty seemed to be

a warehouse for eternity,

and man strayed from his paradigm

of progress on the path of time.

Great capitols the world around

where legislators once were found

who practiced their untempered greed

at the expense of common need

and who for narrow interests led

whole nations into hopeless dread,

were now deserted heaps of stone

where nature had reclaimed its own

with vines and other living things

that would flourish in future springs.

Cathedrals for outdated creeds

where clerics sowed their sterile seeds,

and mindless minions stood in line

despite the speed of their decline,

were splendid still at this late stage

in the destruction of an age,

since ruined grandeur often shows

more beauty in its final throes,

and nature’s artistry replaced

the treasures bedlam had defaced

with flora in abundance spread

and stunning sunsets overhead.

At colleges where scholars reigned

who were by their degrees ordained,

places that should have given birth

to plans that might have saved the earth

but were in webs of dogma caught

allowing little room for thought,

once hallowed halls of bricks and boards

had since been sacked by roaming hoards

and were but pitiful remains

with shattered doors and window panes

where birds and bats entered with ease

along with butterflies and bees,

and winds followed resolved to claim

these vacant halls in nature’s name.

Skyscrapers filled with stately suites

once courts for corporate elites

who added wealth to their accounts

in ever more absurd amounts,

wealth from another’s toil made

who was for work a pittance paid,

wealth gleaned without a worthy goal

to benefit the living whole,

were ghastly tombstones reaching high

into an unremorseful sky,

somber reminders of a past

with practices that could not last.

Large stadiums where man in mass

his precious time would often pass,

time certainly he should have spent

improving his environment,

but time passed mostly to renew

the fortunes of a very few

and time that was forever lost

where destiny and folly crossed,

were now wastelands with empty seats,

deserted after his defeats,

left waiting for time to erase

these souvenirs of his disgrace.

Turbines that moved with awesome might

to furnish man his heat and light,

as giant generators turned

releasing smoke from lofty flues

that stained the sky with sickly hues,

were now in idle disrepair,

the damaged pieces everywhere,

in power plants with ruined walls

where rodents roamed through slimy halls,

and cables that once stretched for miles

lay tangled on the earth in piles,

while high above these scenes of woe

the air was pure like long ago,

a source no more of man’s despair

though few by then survived to care.

Mankind whose prospects once were bright

had seen his day turn into night,

yet he continued to embrace

beliefs without a solid base,

while those in power used their sway

to lead the multitudes astray,

and minds that might have salvaged dreams

were used instead for selfish schemes.

With higher purpose left behind,

his numbers drastically declined

until this trend made very clear

extinction for mankind was near.

As chaos spread from coast to coast,

disease and hunger conquered most,

and for the strong ones still alive,

it was a struggle to survive.

They roamed until the very last

through remnants of a better past

like phantoms of a vanished breed

which lost the vision to succeed,

become now scavengers of waste

that from anarchy could be traced,

who with each other often fought

to seize the plunder that they sought

with weapons fashioned by their hands

like savages from ancient lands

until their numbers were so small

they mattered little overall,

and corpses of the newly slain

littered the post-human terrain.

With mankind destined for demise,

nature’s prospects began to rise

as latent forces long subdued

by man’s misfortunes were renewed.

The seasons four restored to earth

its frozen caps and tropic girth,

and species deemed once to be doomed

their former prominence resumed.

Now freezing winds bleak landscapes fanned

inciting glaciers to expand

where polar bears returned to roam

upon the ice that was their home.

In oceans which had nearly died

surviving creatures multiplied,

and forests that had been stripped bare

were making comebacks everywhere,

while birds of every feathered hue

again the humid jungles flew.

Nature’s kingdom now on the mend,

and human numbers near their end,

two questions lingered all too late:

Could mankind have forestalled his fate?

And if he could have saved his race,

would earth have been a better place?

Romantic Landscape with Ruined Tower by Thomas Cole

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Subjects: poems about, decline of civilization, extinction of species, pollution, climate change, global warming, government, religion, education, finance, entertainment, industry, poetry, poems

A Requiem for the Age of Man