[43] Nothing Lasts, Geoff Sawers

Something wakes you from inside, one day. Perhaps it’s one night, or one very early morning. How can we rebuild from the ground up? Who still remembers their lessons? Empty parched fields that can no longer sustain the crops they once bore, dry ditches and roofless barns. The sea rises and floods the fens but the upland clays crack and fissure into crazy paving. The old are driven to chalk-ridge hollows, counting out their saved money, parcelling up their goods for the last long trek. The memory of water evaporates likes morning dew. Something outside you wakes to you: a face in the clouds, a map in the webs of the stars, the charge in your veins. Nothing lasts, not even your despair.