Christopher Hansard:[ Panic in the afternoon]

Panic in the afternoon

that is when it came, slowly like waking from a long and pleasurable sleep

sitting there in the cafe, the radio blurted out the words,’people are going mad in the streets’

a lot of people went mad just hearing that, leaving their coffee to cool

some of us, ordered more , waiters are most happy when given something to do,

panic in the afternoon, what caused it..? Three centuries of mindless abuse of the planet’s resources

Everyone forgets that it all started with the Industrial Revolution, but which one?..All of them,

History is there to remind us, but we choose to forget, the legacy of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century’s economic belief

gave birth to the illness of .’we can have it all-now’

The Twentieth Century was a century of mistaken identities and had ‘no comment’

The earth spins not because of us, but through us…

there was panic in the afternoon, when the ocean washed away the Maldives, there was

a photograph of the prime minister of the maldives standing on the tallest building shaking his fist,

like a captain going down with his ship and there was more panic when London flooded suddenly

there was panic in the afternoon when the Panama Canal was submerged,

and most of

Indonesia

was invaded by the sea

Nature does not wait for global warming indicators, it will happen all at once, globally

there will be panic in the afternoon,

I prefer taking my afternoon coffee in a cafe high on a mountain

where at least a philosophical view can be washed away and leave room for survival