The UK newspaper The Guardian<\/i> has kicked off a campaign called The 10:10 Climate Change Campaign in order to help reduce carbon emissions throughout the world. The newspaper invited some major British poets to contribute poems responding to the crisis. Here we present two such poems. The first poem called 2084<\/i> is by Carol Rumens, a poet from South London who has published some 14 collections of poems amongst other works. The second poem called Virgil’s Bees<\/i> comes from current poet laureate of Great Britain, Carol Ann Duffy. ——————————
\n2084<\/b> by Carol Rumens<\/p>\n
Paired wheels and PV panels, ponds and hives
\nand garden-fields (citron and silvery-green
\nsamplers, stitched by hand) declare our ground.
\nWe’re scripture-safe in our examined lives;
\nfor each estate, one bin, one fridge, one screen
\nonly, daily rationing of down-loads.
\nThat ice-bar, frilling in the distant sound,
\nthat flood, in motion inches from the cross-roads
\nwhere we abolished run-ways and re-wound
\nthe windmills, will be measured and contained –
\nthe government says so. And the world will sail
\nover the carbon peak: we’ll be in free-fall
\nthe whole sweet way to paradise regained.<\/p>\n
It’s slow, of course. The children want to burn
\nanything that burns. They say we stole
\nthe magic brand, and scraped the sun’s wheel
\nto spark it, so shut up: it’s their turn
\nto hit the gas, light out, ignore the brakes,
\nas children should. Just let us be children
\nthey wail from blazing consoles. And we tell them,
\nor try to, what it was to drive that borrowed
\nchariot, rocketing, spiralling with its florid
\nmachinery in a thunder of gold tyres
\ndown, down the yellowing sky-waste. Oh infelix
\nPhaethon, earth grew nothing, then, but fires.
\nWe drove death into childhood, just being children.<\/p>\n
————————
\nVirgil’s Bees<\/b> by Carol Ann Duffy<\/p>\n
Bless air’s gift of sweetness, honey
\nfrom the bees, inspired by clover,
\nmarigold, eucalyptus, thyme,
\nthe hundred perfumes of the wind.
\nBless the beekeeper<\/p>\n
who chooses for her hives
\na site near water, violet beds, no yew,
\nno echo. Let the light lilt, leak, green
\nor gold, pigment for queens,
\nand joy be inexplicable but there
\nin harmony of willowherb and stream,
\nof summer heat and breeze,
\neach bee’s body
\nat its brilliant flower, lover-stunned,
\nstrumming on fragrance, smitten.<\/p>\n
For this,
\nlet gardens grow, where beelines end,
\nsighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;
\nwhere bees pray on their knees, sing, praise
\nin pear trees, plum trees; bees
\nare the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them.
\n———————–<\/p>\n
Find all the poems and other information about The Guardian<\/i>‘s 10:10 campaign at their website HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The UK newspaper The Guardian has kicked off a campaign called The 10:10 Climate Change Campaign in order to help reduce carbon emissions throughout the world. The newspaper invited some major British poets to contribute poems responding to the crisis. Here we present two such poems. The first poem called 2084 is by Carol Rumens, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":548,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/548"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mahmag.org\/archive-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}