Sad world. We ought not to change that. It was never our fight. So why are we armed to the teeth, hiding in pits behind the barricades anticipating a tragic victory?

Dying world. There’s no stopping that. And we’re to follow. So why are we breaking bones only to cling to the falling crag?

Unhappy folk. Accumulated worth. And unhappy still we are.

One scout. No sign of Man. No sight of prey. No means of victory. “It’s the wrong way!” — He reported. Yet still in the pits we lay, and to our lie resorted.

One soul. One night. The crag shattered. His grip, light. “My time to go, alright!” — He cried. It was never his fight. He died. We’re to follow. Now that we realised. Is it in hindsight?

More dead. More lies. Unhappy folk. Tormented cries. “We pray to die!” — Said the old. Unhappy folk. Now realised. Time, wasted. Death is nigh. The relief we couldn’t buy. For in the trenches we are awry.

Lo! Indeed the world is cursed. What is in it is cursed, except for remembrance of Allah, what is conducive to that, those who acquired knowledge, and those who are acquiring it. Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ)

Such there is Night، not Night as ours—Unhappy Folk
— J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Unhappy Folk: unhappyfolk.org
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Mail: msg@unhappyfolk.org

Possible Interpretation

This is a meditation on collective futility—a group trapped by inertia in a struggle they neither chose nor believe in. The “sad world” and “dying world” establish existential inevitability, yet the community arms itself and waits in trenches for a “tragic victory” (an oxymoron signalling the absurdity of their position). They’re fighting entropy itself, “clinging to the falling crag” as everything crumbles.

The scout’s report—“It’s the wrong way!"—represents ignored truth. They possess the information to escape but remain committed to their “lie,” suggesting wilful delusion or institutional paralysis. The death of “one soul” serves as belated catalyst for recognition, though by then it’s too late. The piece argues that humans persist in doomed endeavours not from hope but from something more pathological—fear of abandoning sunk costs (“accumulated worth”), tribal commitment, or simple inability to imagine alternatives.

The final image of people “awry” in trenches, praying for death they cannot “buy” (afford? achieve?), suggests that even escape through death is denied them. They’re condemned to consciousness of their waste—trapped not just physically but by their own belated awareness.