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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