The answer is that he does a year of English and History at Glasgow University and, by the end of it, Donne and his round Earth's imagined corners have gotten mixed up with Hobsbawm and his history that never 'reaches the turning point and fails to turn', it just turns in unexpected or undesired directions. And then he writes a poem, yo.
The end of the world (as we know it)
We’re terribly fond of
the end of the world.
We didn’t need a
theory of tectonics
To set the mountains
crumbling with our words;
We didn’t need a
Hubble telescope
To watch the stars
explode, or tumble down;
And we saw seas of
blood in feverish dreams
Before we ever woke to
find them true.
The end of the world
has troubled our sleep
From the beginning.
But where do ends
begin, beginnings end?
They’re like that
Nordic serpent who devours
His tail – until,
hoho!, he ends the world;
But afterwards the
world begins again.
Until another god has
has his day:
Another final battle,
another new world born,
Another war is fought
to end all war.
Perhaps the end has
come and gone?
Perhaps a mountain
that will crumble
Has been eaten through
by worms?
Perhaps the stars will
only tumble
When their lights have
all but burned?
Perhaps the end will
come and go?
And when brazen
trumpets have sounded,
And when mountains and
stars are gone,
Perhaps the world ends
in the silence
That lets thought echo
loud and long?
Arise! Arise! At the
round Earth’s imagined corners – turn.
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