Climate Change
by Bill Yarrow
Every year I have a birthday, and every year another
of my friends succumbs to cancer or virus or suicide.
That's a shitty gift. That is devoutly not to be wished.
We are all buried by this and that, drowning
in the undone, poisoned by longing and loss,
bulldozed by a future implacable and black.
But there's a way back from sickness, from
error, from shame. We are built to recover,
to regenerate, to re-image, to re-form.
A part of me is melting, yes. I no longer
understand what I know or even remember what
I think. Every day I am, more or less, less.
Meanwhile, every straw vote, every independent poll,
shows that the incandescent kingdom will be reinstalled.
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Author's Note
A version of this poem was published in Olentangy Review and appears in "Critique of Pure Dreaming" (free download at academia.edu ).
Source of the allusion in the last stanza:
"I made no campaign promises, because until a few weeks ago I had no hope of being elected. Now, however, I have something more than a hope. And Jim Gettys -- Jim Gettys has something less than a chance. Every straw vote, every independent poll shows that I'll be elected. Now I can afford to make some promises!
The working man -- The working man and the slum child know they can expect my best efforts in their interests. The decent, ordinary citizens know that I'll do everything in my power to protect the underprivileged, the underpaid, and the the underfed!
Well, I'd make my promises now if I weren't too busy arranging to keep them.
Here's one promise I'll make, and boss Jim Gettys knows I'll keep it: My first official act as Governor of this State will be to appoint a Special District Attorney to arrange for the indictment, prosecution, and conviction of Boss Jim W. Gettys!"
-Charles Foster Kane, running for governor of New York [from "Citizen Kane"].
Yes *
more or less, less
Maybe there's a way back, but I haven't found it. This poem is a start, but in the end I'm the same as I was, more or less ***
"Every day I am, more or less, less."
Beautiful.
"A part of me is melting, yes. I no longer
understand what I know or even remember what
I think. Every day I am, more or less, less."
Marvelous poem, Bill.
Resonant.
"That's a shitty gift."
It is.*
Thanks, Christian, Foster, Erika, Sam, Gary, and Jenny!
* splendid poem, bill--
Thanks, Gary!
Sad freaking march sometimes, yeah?
Life is a tactical retreat, a delaying action, skirmish here, skirmish there... but attrition gets us all eventually. Falling back from Moscow in the snow. "Sound muster and call the roll, Sergeant."
Good stuff, this. *****
Thanks, JLD.
"Sad freaking march sometimes?
For sure.
"attrition gets us all eventually"
Sigh.
*, Bill. Yet more of your excellent verse.
Thanks, David!