Apocalypse Lost

For some time now, I've been wanting to assemble a collection of media that would be a retrospective of the Cold War. It does indeed date me, to be thinking of it; there are many alive today who were born after the Berlin Wall came down. But every now and then I see a fragment of my imaginary media collection, and I think of war, and peace, and how it was to grow up in a world dominated by the threat of – no, not war, but ultimate destruction.

Here are some of the fragments which have passed through my hands recently. I am not going to link them, for in the days of the Cold War, things were retrieved in the old, difficult, paranoid ways.

1. 99 Red Balloons (Nena): This song was a sort of a one-hit German wonder, originally composed by Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen (music) and Carlo Kagres (words), and translated into English by Kevin McAlea. It's a vision of innocence, pulp fiction, and sudden death. Red balloons, indeed.

2. Forever Young (Alphaville): Another German group, and the year was 1984. This is an elegy to the end of the Cold War, written as if from the viewpoint of a peculiar madness which cannot quite grasp that the whole conflict is over.

3. Fallout and Fallout II: These computer games epitomised the post-apocalyptic CRPG. Built on an engine which would one day be utterly familiar to players of Diablo and suchlike, Fallout took you from a deeply buried underground colony in search of spare parts for your water supply and ended with you making the world safe(r) from insane cyborgs. The sequel was even better!

4. We Didn't Start The Fire (Billy Joel): This song, a collection of seemingly haphazard historical items, concealed a whole cornucopia of meaning, the least of which is the idea of, "Well, then. Who did?" The driven rhythm matches the lyrics in winding up the listener. It's a great adrenalin-boosting track.

5. Dinner at Deviant's Palace (Tim Powers): It looks and feels like post-apocalypse novel written as fantasy. It's a gritty and painful bildungsroman, if you like. But mostly, it's a great story in a barren land.

6. A Canticle For Liebowitz (Walter Miller): Another novel, this one dealing with the nature of religion after the apocalypse is some time gone. Rather moving, has a sequel which doesn't quite make it.

And that's it for now.

1989

It was a good year. There might not have been bright cities in the sky or flames in the night, but it was a year for the shaking and stilling of nations. I sat in the darkened greenish phosphorescence of the old computer centre, and I wrote this for the children born that year. I never expected to meet any of them. It was that kind of silliness.

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December in the Poetry Room

Peace, children, is
not the continuation of war
by other means;
no, not that, nor the sullen anger
waiting to burst

But, peace; peace in
our time and in our space, it was
unexpected;
we did not, could not, know what to do;
it was a time

For the breaking
down of walls; we saw on every front
hope glimmering.
It was a different time, my children;
try, understand...

Perhaps we had,
had left the shadow of the long fear
behind ourselves
which was the breaking of the nations
you will not know

It's December.
All mankind buries its dead at last
and winter comes;
my children, in the summer months, will
you remember?

15 December 1989