Not with a Bang

I am glad I learnt poetry at school
Though some, I think, thought me a fool
When my mind, not on other lessons,
Was soaring with Hopkins’ Windhover,
Or with a kingfisher, darting out of its crannied nest.
And did they not know that when my mind was in a trance
I was wandering like a cloud,
Captured by Wordsworth daffodils’ dance?

It seems that Dorothea MacKeller did not do us a favour,
Though in the past, her words of my country I did savour.
Sadly, by some, her words have been estranged,
And used as yet another poor excuse
For blocking action on climate change.

TS Eliot’s “not with a bang but a whimper”
I used to think described the post-viral end of my career.
But now may be a prediction of far, far greater gravity’
Bought on by our own depravity:
Adoption of a must-have-growth economy;
Excessive clearing, fossils fuels, greed;
And lies.

So, TS Eliot’s whimper may very well be
The last sound of humanity,
Unless, against all current trends,
We soon find climate sanity.

 

“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.” ¹

¹ T. S. Elliot, The Hollow Men