[Verse: Simon Armitage]
I'm curious
Because to show mercy once in a blue moon only makes the unforgiving
More furious
As if kindness and grace were ethereal rare gifts in the realm of the
Luxurious
As if there was something hard and remote at the core of the human
Nucleus
Despite compassion and tenderness making the darkest of souls almost perfectly
Luminous
I've sensed some creature not far from the surface, cold-blooded, imperious
With a hard like a cannonball lost in an ocean trench - stony, impervious
Or lodestone lodged in the brain and locked on a bad star that brings out
The worst in us
Look at me, God's gift to graffiti, spell-checking
'Endurious'
Look at you, joy-riding the soft-top hearse all the way to the
Terminus
Here we go, planting our poppies then torching the forest carelessly
Serious
Meanwhile, we're crowding the brink of the lip of the cusp of the ring of the next
Vesuvius
Trying to flag down a passing planet or mothership
Failing to lip-read
The universe