Regardless of hemisphere,
how can we say now
which month is the cruellest?
All the weather everywhere
has gone extreme, in ways
that appear capricious
though in fact a logical response
to our silly, greedy, or just-
plain-thoughtless tinkering.
It’s a wild world we live in now,
not yet a wasteland, perhaps –
or only in portions, where the wars are –
but it’s coming, that time
we used to call the future, so much
closer now … inevitable, inexorable.
***
In April we make poems,
many of us, around the so-called
civilised world. That’s not
the same as civil. Oh, if we could all
be (truly, deeply) civil to each other! Maybe
then, poems would have some meaning.
The ‘legislators of society’ now
are the money-makers, the big
money-spenders to make more.
Headlong to our doom,
we might as well make poems
as we plunge over the cliff.
Is the cruellest month the one
in which most suffered, died …?
Or that which offered hope?
Notes:
April is poetry month in America and is now observed in many other countries too, particularly in the (international) online poetic community. Many people commit to write a poem a day for this month, often to prompts published in specific online poetic groups.
In 'The Defence of Poetry' 1821, the poet Shelley claimed that 'poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world'.
The line, 'April is the Cruelest month' begins T.S. Eliot's poem, 'The Waste Land'.
***
This piece was written for Friday Writings #170 at Poets and Storytellers United.
