Lapsing Into Oblivion

The darkness does not lift but becomes yet heavier as I think how little we can hold in mind…

Regents Canal, Lisson Grove, Westminster, NW8

…how everything is constantly lapsing into oblivion with every extinguished life, how the world is, as it were, draining itself…

Leake Street, Waterloo, Lambeth, SE1

…in that the history of countless places and objects which themselves have no power or memory is never heard, never described or passed on.

Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, Hackney, N16

From WG Sebald’s Austerlitz (2001)

Darkness

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

John Martin's Apocalypse, Tate Britain, Pimilco, Westminster, SW1P

The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Mike Leigh's Naked (1993)

Morn came and went–and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread

Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1952)

Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill’d into a selfish prayer for light…

Bill Callahan's Apocalypse (2011)

From Lord Byron’s Darkness (1816)