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The sky falling - Rowan Williams
—–

“They [the Celtic chiefs] told him that they feared only one thing, that the sky should fall” Arrian, the Expedition of Alexander.
—–

A joke, perhaps? They still
do it, solemnly meeting
the earnest foreigner’s enquiry.
Because there could have been,
surely, no terror

For the lime-rinsed and technicolour-
shirted, head-hungry, henpecked
louts who so irritated
dry Caesar in the promise of an end
so brisk and flat

And messy, like flies squashed
between the pages as the book
claps shut; dying of the applause
of heaven and earth when they
join hands

At the show’s end. Or maybe,
after all, serious. Think of them
lurching out of the doorway
to breathe, pee, vomit,
packed with booze

Kebabs and mutual admiration,
into the cold; the snow just starting
and the sky slips gently
and piecemeal into the grass
and vanishes,

Fragments of brief intricacy,
like the bard’s lovely, hot,
cosseting songs indoors,
the words that freeze great doings
(rapes, wars)

In symmetries and stars; and going
nowhere. The stories sink
into the grass at night,
and the earth sits there,
not applauding.

Spreading an empty palm;
swallowing the sparks of damp
and formal brilliance. Very
quiet.
No joke.