David Taylor

Stonehaven, Grampian, UK

The story of my life isn't important, so I'll make a philosophical statement instead: The earth we live on is so familiar to us we don't realise how vulnerable it is. It's getting old before its time, thanks to us - the disease on its surface. Man is a destroyer: he destroys everything, including the air we breathe. And there are too many of us - most of them hungry. The last ice age is a terrifying race-memory - what will the next one be like? People of good will are powerless; but the rulers of the world seem concerned only with making money - for themselves. What will they do when the time runs out and the final crunch comes? We are arguably a failed species, too irrational and foolish to survive. I hope I'm wrong.

Man to Man-AD 2000

Cro-Magnon crouching on Azilian stone,
Muscular conqueror of the temperate zone,
Fashioning a spear from dead mammoth's bone;
You, who, self-structured, will live to create
The ambivalent splendours of the superstate
And scatter the forces of darkness and fate.
Evolution's front- runner on a gold-winning trail,
Selected against all the odds to prevail,
From my dread present to your dread past: Hail !

To A Space Ship

O nose-cone waiting for the countdown terse,
Grey navigator of the universe,
What law of nature do you hope to reverse?

End-product of ten thousand years of skill,
Apex of man's monumental will,
Do you think he will cease to be earthbound still?

Mystical link with the stars of the night,
Where will you soar in your fathomless flight?
Will you find the truth in the stardust bright?

Beautiful Girls Of Long Ago

Beautiful girls of long ago,
Smiling under the blue skies of summer,
Joyous as the waves of the sea,
Soft as flowers
Along the morning path of life;
Sparkling at the noontide,
Sultry at the dusk,
Mysterious in the moonlight
Beautiful illusions
That haunted my dreams
In the long nights of summer
So near and yet so far:
Where are you now?
Not dancing by the dancing summer waves
Where the spray of the sea glistens
Among the rocks
And sprinkles your creamy curves,
Laced with blue veins
Above the knee, as once it did
To Iseut aux Blanches Mains
Beside the Breton shore;
Not lying in the tall grass
Along the cliff-tops
Dallying with the wildflowers
And reciting in your souls
The poetry of youth;
Not in the star lit woods
Under the dark boughs,
Moist with the dews of night
And laden with solemn silence;
Not by the rippling bay
With the moonglade playing at your feet:
There I find you no more.
Like the torch turned to ashes
Like the flame turned to smoke.
Like the smoke-cloud scattered on the wind
You are nowhere now.