America is busy being great again,

The Jacobins are back in France,

Britain searches for herself,

Putin peers askance.

 

China sits on a pretty pile,

India was always great,

The rest of the world fidgets furtively,

Wondering at its fate.

 

Nature fires shards of ice

Into the hottest tea,

The Earth snarls “boy, will you pay

For what you have done to me.”

 

The money-makers shrug and hasten

To collar the Stock-Exchange;

Their part of the Earth seems always safe

From global climate change.

 

Will they sink like the rest of us

When the oceans rise?

Or will the waters part for them

To a richer paradise?


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Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society. His columns on the Znet have a global following. Raina taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is the author of the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. He has several collections of poems and translations. His writings have appeared in nearly all major English dailies and journals in India.

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