While surveying an empty house – <br /> <br />Abandoned scraps of unknown lives <br />Lying in corners, <br />A plastic slatted curtain slapping a wall <br />In the silent interior, <br />Children in the sunny street outside crying 'No no! <br />You must say GENERAL OLIVER One Two Three', <br />A ginger cat lazy on a wall in each numbered window <br /> <br />– I found a book of Norse mythology <br />Which I read <br />While eating my lunch in a nearby cafe. <br />Returning unwillingly from the spring sunshine <br />To my solitary task <br />I found the door to darkness forced ajar. <br /> <br />Three weary men with wary eyes <br />Came down from the hills when the war was lost. <br />Dazed and bewildered they came to the ruins <br />Of the works of men by the works of men <br />And on one remaining wall they saw <br />A farewell message sprayed in red- <br />'We multiply and dwindle <br />And nurse our interchangeable dreams <br />And pale loves <br />In curious isolation. <br />The heroes chained within us <br />No longer even struggle for release <br />Believing themselves to be free' <br /> <br />Then the one who was maddest and furthest from home <br />Laughed high and shrill and slapped his thighs <br />And cried 'The Fenris Wolf is loose <br />That was bound with the cord of elves and dwarves <br />Which they made from the sound of the step of a cat <br />And the breath of a fish and the spit of a bird <br />And a woman's beard and a city’s green <br />And they vowed it would hold to the end of time.'<br /><br />Stewart McKenzie<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/x-diary-01-a-solitary-lunch-hour/
