Destruction

My reading of the poem: 

 


Destruction

It’s a different kind of fiddling while the world burns,

writing poems in the teeth of devouring flames –

not that we don’t care, but that we do. Not, any longer,

that we think fire is beautiful (we know it’s monstrous)

but because, Heaven help us, we still dare to imagine

that poetry might save the world – though it never did,

it only lamented. Or cried defiance. Or raged. Sometimes

it attempted comfort; more often catharsis. But I’m afraid

our words never changed anything: money remains power; one 
slave trade stopped, but there are still (right now!) slaves; peace 
never lasts for long. And so on. Whatever makes us think

anyone is listening to this? How can we possibly suppose

that in times to come our words will be read, understood,

valued? Can we believe there will be any times to come,

for any kind of life form that could read a written language?

And yet I am here, writing, whether or not. Because poetry

has my soul. I always said, ‘Come the apocalypse, I’ll go out

scratching one last poem in the dirt with the nearest stick.’

This is a different kind of apocalypse. Those of us who live

(while we do) surrounded by fires that make Hell seem tame

go about our day-to-day business with very little complaint –

though many tears and huge anger. We simply feel that doom

is reality. Much too much evidence, now, to doubt. Some pray,
but Heaven’s no help – unless to help us enter it by death.

Those of us who still have lives, and homes to live them in,

celebrate Christmas and New Year’s Eve. We eat, drink

and make merry. What else should we do? Those who can

are out fighting the fires; those who must are fleeing or dying.

We try not to think too hard about all the lost trees and animals....

We might as well make poems. There’s nothing else we can do.

Written for Brendan's new earthweal site, dedicated to poetry on the climate crisis.

I am also sharing the video as part of a discussion on Video Poetry in my Wild Fridays series at Poets and Storytellers United.

I've made a slight rewrite to a couple of the lines you read here, for the sake of clarity; the video version is earlier.