These days, it does not rain

But it pours;

The waters drown the steeples,

Not to speak of the doors.

These days, the fires do not enact

A routine seasonal blaze;

They paint crimson a hemisphere

In a consuming coastal craze.

Man has instruments that tell him

What ruin has come to pass;

But the next redemptive instrument

Only compounds the loss.

Alas, the Arctic has far less chill

Than the advanced brain of man;

And, the unruly fires everywhere

Less heat than the human brain

 

No Silicon Valley technician,

No doctrine from the pulpit

May cure the human chill and blaze–

Only the poet knows how to do it.

 

Which is why poets are banished from the realm,

Consigned to menageries;

should they infect the heart with sense,

How may the brain the piles increase?

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