Natural Visions

by Justin Wong (February 2024)

A world that grows complex in time
Wipes the savage from his climes,
I see history’s end in Arcady
In stars that grow more orderly.
One can destroy an order ossified
With atoms—seeds of regicide.
To kill an untrue paramour,
The void be your conspirator.
The fruit that falls to the earth’s foundations
Marks the end of bordered nations,
And fossils found beneath the sod
Are arms that can impale a god.
The wondrous Lord’s celestial feat,
Concerns the ground beneath your feet.
To proclaim the world is without form
Will place a crown upon a worm.
What was there before the eye could see
Are desires of what the world should be.
The earth that’s measured aeons old
Are bricks that built Buchenwald.
The Universe that moves to entropy,
Are keys that lock a monastery.
The cut worm that takes another breath
Contradicts the natural law of death.
The beauty of a slum grown flower
Is a tract against all earthly power.
The world revolving in a ring
Is a law refuting rules of Kings,
And the world that spins upon its course,
Draws a line ‘neath ancient laws.
To say past things aren’t reassured
Will make of you an epicure.
The resurrected body of our Lord
Drops the tyrant’s vengeant sword.
Glorious nature’s princeless rule,
Is the anarchist’s unquenching fuel.
Falling stars that hurtle in a shower
Are fruits of a revolt for power.
To bask in nature’s sights and smells
Is to see how man constructs a hell.
To view man’s savage commonwealth
Can make an idol of the self.
The cosmos starting with a blast
Puts poets in a lowly caste.
To prove the world’s not made by the sixth night
Kills categories of wrong and right;
And the world not made within six days
Makes cityscapes a dreary grey.
What’s taught at home by the fire’s roar
Will shape the world outside the door.
Within the forest, the savage man
Is an idea on how our kind began.
The sun that moves around the earth
Endows a man with his self-worth.
The moving orbs at constant rate,
Is a fact on which man blames his fate,
And these sandy wastes are a gulf between
A promised land as yet unseen.

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Justin Wong is originally from Wembley, though is presently based in the West Midlands. He has been passionate about the English language and literature since a young age. Previously, he lived in China working as an English teacher. His novel, Millie’s Dream, is available here.