Static Poem by David Lewis Paget

Stark patterns rent by winter storms
Sweep the blood-red sky,
By haunted mills and frozen rills
The static crackles by;
But not a stone stands on a stone
To halt its whispered sigh.

Through twisted steel and molten glass
The signal spends its force
Then mutters on through blackened wheat,
Bent on its wayward course;
But none may hear the crackling tear
That shimmers through the gorse.

Twice round the earth the signal runs
To seek that whip of steel,
The midnight radio of man
Has ceased to hear or feel,
And silence reigns, where once had seen
The skirling of the reel.

In some deep water-filling ditch
Lost in a ravaged land,
The signal finds a radio
Clutched in a dead man’s hand;
And crackles static through its leads:
‘I have returned, for man! ’

9 July 1978