Solastalgia - poem

The last time I wrote a poem I was nineteen,

Beset, no doubt, by teenage angst and introspection.

Age brings wisdom, so they say, and with it recollection.

But now, as civilisation collapses about our ears,

Where’s the Olympian perspective, the mature reflection?

One phrase alone I still recall, one only: ‘woven wall’, a wry perception,

Prompted by drystone inclosure of moorland reshaped for wool - and wealth.

Now, in a far-off land, similar walls surround me, stirring poignant memories.

Ancient, immemorial, impassive they testify to generations of endless toil,

Built for patrimony, repaired for posterity, abandoned prematurely.

Woven wall is more than mere alliteration, I believe.

It speaks of rugged resilience, resistance interweaved with every stone.

And walls, much more than territorial boundaries – the warp and weft of hope;

Hope for security, for peace and for prosperity, rooted in the earth.

All this and more I read into these constructions, eloquent in their silence.

Standing or fallen, they tell the human story - a  tragic tale of hope and hubris

Written in unmortared stone, of the moment hunter-gatherers turned farmers,

Placed yokes around the necks of cattle and in so doing enslaved themselves.

It was a primordial error none of us can now escape, a curse without redemption.

We are condemned forever by that wrong-turning of our forebears.

Now, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers – as we do our planet.

We die for dross - stuff we cannot eat or drink, much less take with us.

There are no pockets in shrouds, they say, and that’s the truth,

But who’d be seen dead in a shroud these days when a chromed casket entices?

Satin-lined, comfortably upholstered, a pharaonic fantasy – sans resurrection.