As I am sitting here alone <br />the furnace kicks in with a roar, <br />reminding me that I have known <br />that sudden surging power and faced <br />its monstrous appetite before <br />in days of ruin, rage, and waste. <br /> <br />I did not comprehend it then; <br />a schoolboy by the bomber 'drome <br />I only dreamed heroic men <br />with bones of virtue, nerves of steel, <br />defending peace and truth and home. <br />Now, as the furnace roars, I feel <br /> <br />a different alien creature here <br />beside me, living by a rule <br />beyond my grasp, a thing of fear <br />moved by no love, desire or hate, <br />impersonal, and have to school <br />myself to think it less than Fate <br /> <br />which kicks in when we're least prepared <br />and swells a cancer in the gut, <br />burns up a nerve without a word <br />of warning or, maybe, commands <br />a palsied brain, a dragging foot, <br />blind eyes and useless, nervous hands, <br /> <br />or so we tell ourselves who wait <br />in our expectant rooms alone, <br />and know that either soon or late <br />we'll hear that overmastering roar <br />and learn what it has always known: <br />there is no after or before, <br /> <br />but only an illusion that <br />it is our destiny to feed. <br />Good or Evil, thin or fat, <br />black or white are all the same <br />and mutable. We do not need <br />success or failure, shame or fame; <br /> <br />all credos that enrage or please, <br />all joy and suffering, love and hate, <br />are droplets in enormous seas; <br />yet as the furnace stops I sense, <br />poised in a sudden lucid stae, <br />that Fate is also a pretence.<br /><br />Robin Skelton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-furnace/
