Having read the poem ‘Slough’ by John Betjeman, it’s easy to apply it to what we know in this modern world. Not all of it, but it’s getting that way. I wrote the poem beneath because his poem drew me to the idea that in this modern world of England we seem less likely to face death as our ancestors did. In our concrete jungles where food is so accessible we don’t have to worry about the threat of winter starving us, the cold is sheltered by our masses of homes, there are no wild animals that threaten us we killed them off, hospitals are at the ready if we fall ill and it goes on. Of course poverty is still a problem and we don’t all have these securities but that’s the fault of this system of course. In this modern world, many of the threats of death are man-made. The poem makes the point on its own.
It is chilling when we are reminded of our fragile mortality,
Our lives the soft glimmer of a flame that could be easily snuffed,
Little essence’s of lights dancing, burning with insatiable lust,
For money, power, a famous name; we all play passionately,
In a dim-witted game.
If we focus on these little things that echo of false promise,
The threat of our mortality fades away to whispers,
Whispers uttered only in the golden flames of autumn,
In the breeze, and fallen leaves; winter is slowly coming.
All these shadowed games and ignorant lies,
A life spent in dreaming, preening and hiding,
From a wild sky painted furious with shadows of winter;
That promises mortality.
And suddenly the shadows of death they loom,
Lamenting softly of sickness, murder and war;
A sweetly sung lullaby of bombs erupting,
That cruelly take away the lives you thought were so safe.