DOME SWEET DOME

In a recent radio interview I remarked that nowadays I seem to write ever more gloomy poems, and it's true: my output of cheerful or even humorous odes seems to have become almost non-existent as I've grown older. 
Maybe it's the ageing process, or reaction to the horror that greets us daily with each news bulletin, or perhaps it's simply the persistent melancholia that seems to go hand in hand with being a poet.

AFTERMATH

Outside the Domes, fires rage unchecked.
We watch them burn, without concern.
Out there, gangs forage and compete:
factions at war, they win or die,
although, to winners, small reward.
They will become extinct in time:
our Leaders say it shall be so.
Warfare will quell them, or disease;
starvation, as the stubborn earth
refuses nurture, offers stones
instead of nourishment or bread,
or when the curdled rivers dry
and poison taints lakes, ponds and springs;
till fish rot, belly-up, and stink
and every apple hides a worm.
Then, no live thing will flourish there,
outside the Domes, beyond the Shield, 
except those creeping tongues of flame
that seem to stir some latent thing
within us, some primeval need
to seek, in those wild silhouettes,
an image of the world before
the Cataclysm and the Domes,
when we were simply humankind,
when we and Nature intertwined.