Songs of Ruinous Anger

Edmund Young, “Night Thoughts”

Mortality, bearing its grand gift, hung above like that torment of Damocles Setting loose the anxieties of existence and the portent of death, At once life was brief - a candle changing into nothing, Yet beautiful, for amid the terror I loved twice.

What is known? - I was born. And for what purpose? - To be a son. But beyond that? - I cannot say, Except to wonder each and every day.

And now I have joined their ranks - That society of grey and grief, But onward atop this shaky plank ’til I’m taken by the constant thief.

Of course the mind is lost - How can it not be, When one divines the dear cost of oblivion and entropy?

In the lands of mankind Look around among you, There are demons to be found And some angels too.

Come the night I come alive for pleasures' span I wish to strive, As nocturne tunes do hymn their sound a brand new kingdom I think I've found, At once above and below the earth a strenuous thing it was to birth, But now expands like the monsoon wave so enter, come, ye saint and brave.

Any manner of ideological discourse be just intellectuals talking, While the common man they claim to speak for simply goes on walking Along the pathway of his own life both pleasant and stark, As the others arrange their revolt, promising paradise but risking the dark.

“Midnight’s Children”, Salman Rushdie