We measure fever in the earth’s thin air,
while building castles with no windows,
and each increment becomes un-said, un-thought,
turned into manifestos of magnificent forgetting,
and sweet lullabies we rock ourselves to sleep with,
while science becomes heresy, becomes conspiracy,
and governments genuflect at altars of empty gesture,
their promises melting faster than permafrost,
as we retreat wilfully into old mythologies:
that someone else’s children will solve this,
that technology is messiah, that denial is armour,
that if we close our eyes and dream, the rising
waters become just a passing mirage,
the scorched fields become metaphor,
the extinctions become statistics we can un-feel,
as we devour this gentle lamb called progress
that we’ve sworn to believe isn’t there.

 

16/9/2025