O Light! She Was the Universe

By Paul atten Ash

Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish’d with a crash—and all was black.

— Lord Byron, ‘Darkness’

Memory—perverse—a cathedral of crumbling prayer vexing me.
This is an orison for the Earth. The eternal knell of closing time.
Hurry up please, it’s time! Life’s last drops o’ the Lethean cup. Sup!
Repine you not. For once we were wind-washed in mountain air,
our vistas long without compare. O Light! She was the Universe.
The hem of her starlit dress limning our shores forever more …

Folly! Foul temptress. Forsaken by ignescent eyes. We, the hexed,
line up, to huddle around watchfires at night, taken in by the Sun.
We photon-glutted fools! Cuckolded on untruths, of rays’ bounty
fuelling deep-sequestered tragedy—a carbon-profligate prophecy.
O Light! That ever we were meant to live. For all falls to shadow,
all industry, all learning lost! Here in the everlasting heat death o’

the Universe, expanding forever—after the Age of Black Holes—
the very last remnants of the very last stars. Hurry up please, it’s time!
Eliot extinguish’d, Byron banish’d, Shakespeare sunder’d: the word
swallowed up, evaporating away, all verse but a cold sea of photons.
O Light! That we once loved & warred, and crawled upon all fours
to divine our downfall in the lumberyard’s fell, forgive our wanton

souls, our grubbing hands, the stench of human oil, the coal mine
canary requiem, forgive us for losing our way, for each extinction,
every microaggression, our pitiful addictions, our goals, our greed,
our business acumen. All of it shameful, all of this meaningless, &
all of it for nothing. Come heat death, come rising tide, and hasten
the end—for the light we have been given has been utterly wasted.



Paul atten Ash is the pen name of Bristol, UK-based Paul Nash. He has been published by Broken Sleep Books, Butcher’s Dog, Full House Literary, Magma Poetry, Nine Arches Press (forthcoming), Salò Press, Sídhe Press, among others. Prize shortlistings include: Alpine Fellowship (2023) and Ginkgo (2022, 2021). Searchlight Seasons, his debut poetry pamphlet, will be published by Atomic Bohemian (atomicbohemian.com) in October 2024. He is currently curating We Dream in Green (a collaboration of contrapuntal ecopoetry), as well as working towards his first collection. campsite.bio/northseanavigator; X: @NorthSeaNav; IG: @north_sea_navigator