Stripped naked of pretension, this place
Has returned to Nature – no disgrace
To bird or animal – for man’s edifices crumble
Beneath the bombs and teach him to be humble.
But life endures and reproduces itself again
Through all the dust, dishevelment and pain,
For God restores it all.
Coming on again
The flowers besiege with perfume
Crumbled rubble, spreading their influence
Where man has burst his bubble.
Seeds sprouting in blasted crevices
Show anew God’s healing power,
Which saves earth from oblivion, hour by hour.
Where man has built his palaces of sorts,
Nature re-establishing herself resorts
To grass and thistle, shamrock and briar rose.
Where man’s actions were violent, new repose
Asserts its claim.
The naked shells
Of houses where no living being dwells
Mock at eternity,
And sightless eyes of windows without panes
Gape idiot-like at the retreating planes,
And the muttered stutter of machine-gun fire
Provides a mechanical requiem
For a funeral pyre.
A deathly silence follows and then
Over this scene of destruction there flows
The unlikely song of a bird
In thrilling, flowing notes,
And this place destroyed by man
Is redeemed by God,
Who sets His earth alive again.
Everything man can do has been revealed –
Now God, through Nature, takes a turn,
And life’s repealed.
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