However did we imagine
November would be more or less like April
but with days getting slightly dark and cold
that shopping, traffic, bills, crime, and the NHS
would be in much the same state as before?

However did we imagine
there was going to be a nationwide election
In which our cuckoo-in-the-nest administration
would be cast out into exterior darkness
for the foreseeable future?

However did we imagine
that the sun would rise tomorrow
that the trusty web would be there waiting for us
when its fragile light-pipes run along the sea-bed
past the world’s most desperate combat zones?

However did we imagine
that the kettle would boil when we flicked the switch
that water would still come out of the taps?
There’s places in the world that doesn’t happen.
They draw a little closer day-by-day.

However did we imagine
we’d be spectators as whole cities perished
and the combatants’ allies would not be drawn
into a Middle Eastern conflagration
spitting embers far across the world?

However did we imagine
that a nuclear power, and a former one, so said,
could have a twentieth century war in Europe
with half a million reported casualties
and we’d not be embroiled up to our necks?

However did we imagine
that climate emergency, pollution, overpopulation
would coast along to scarcely touch our lives
not teeter on the brink of being solved
in cruellest and most devastating ways?