The End (Thought for the Day) ; A Sombre Mood.

"This year it is difficult to escape a very sombre national mood" - HRH Queen Elizabeth II.

From “Speech to the Shapers”, Lucien Stryk

They are wrong who think the end will be

Violent, rank alarmists….

                              The end will steal upon

Us as an average day, sometime between

Breakfast and lunch, while Father is down

At the office, Junior playing ball

And Mother is choosing lambchops at

The butcher’s. Unannounced, it will drop

From a cloudless sky, or like a cut

In the power takes us by surprise,

With all the lights snuffed out together…

We’ll never know what hit us where, or when.

Lucien Stryk, "Where We Are, Selected Poems and Zen Translations", London, 1997.