Four-Minute Warning

Out of town and out of luck,
away from warnings of the end of time
the disadvantaged countryside
falls to its sleep without the word
of missiles flying to us,
gifts from grateful enemies.

Late suppers finished
see us off to bed in silence
with the distance crowding down,
the weather undisturbed and failing
in its muffling and baffle,
while the screams of rockets

from the nearby politics
of civil war go overhead
without a touch to us.
The PC dozes, spilling drink
and books to fire-lighted floor,
his disconnected phone still flashing.

A clank of late-night feedings
streaks between these villages,
one metal impact, blanketing
the roar of traffic covering
the distant, powered ululation
warning of the war above.

The crank of our siren rusts,
has rusted here for years,
twined in the undergrowth
that pulses over it with seasons,
tides of spring, then autumn
hiding it from panic.

And only those who hear it die;
for all of us the world goes on
in peace and light and our desires,
cut from the universe of morals,
the fields and woods supporting us
without metropolis and poisons.