Much as poets like to make art, they also feel a moral compulsion to be politically committed. For poets of the 20th century, history has been the awakening force, catalysed by decades of war, rebellions, racial strife, changes in political systems. Of course, on top of all these is the all-pervading problem of global warming, which the following poem attempts to lend its voice.
WHEN WORDS FAIL
How do you say
the world as you know today,
the world you were born into,
the world that has birthed every song,
every novel, every poem, every play
the world that has remained
essentially unchanged for all human time
will be different?
Perhaps irreversibly and tragically different?
I speak to the sky’s
reluctant carbon bath,
to the seas’ heating pangs,
to Tundra wildfires in Spring
to rainbow reefs shuddering
at their white death,
to the ocean’s throat
choked with a billion pieces of plastics
drifting down to where
we should find pearls.
I’d say we speak no more!
As for you, Big Brother –
your vapour words
grate even the cadres.
Look up the blackened sky,
and remember the Eden story,
and ask that the broken light
burn a number on your insouciant foreheads,
an absolute limit of something existential,
like 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere:
Bust this and the planet will unravel
like a cheap sweater mangled by a cat.
Then, get down from your high horses,
and say out loud: “350!”,
Then draw a line in the sand,
and do everything you can.