A riff on, but no apologies to, Gerard Manley Hopkins
MAN’S MINDSET
The world is charged with the mindset of man
It will flame out, like shining
from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the
ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do we then now not think our plan?
Generations have gone, have gone, have gone;
And all is seared with trade;
bleared, smeared with toil;
And wear’s man’s smudge and shares
man’s smell; the soil
Is hard now, as foot can feel, worn to bone.
And in all this, nature is badly spent;
There
lies the dearest drearness deep down things;
And as the last lights of the black West went
No
morning at the brown brink eastward springs —
Spiritus Mundi flees from the rent
World,
pale with dead mist; no comfort it brings.
