Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

They stand in line, pitching disasters, all
convinced they have the ending.  First, we see
flooding in Yorkshire.  English rain again.
Familiar, overcast, but cheap.  This time,
no birds, no trees;  temperatures rise,
the bugs take over. Nothing we can do.

Go North.  Alaska.  What’s a bear to do
when winters aren’t so cold?  Dried lakes.  We’re all
on thinner ice.  Suicide’s on the rise;
you need the booze, so you don’t have to see
your food migrate, your job dissolve in time.
This thawing permafrost won’t freeze again.

Pacific island paradise, again.
The sunset backdrop.  Slowly, people do
the stuff they have to, then relax.  There’s time
to party, snorkel while it lasts, for all
this colour, coral fades;   their kids won’t see
the end, the sea’s inexorable rise.

Now, urban squalor.  Slums, apartments, rise
above the Beijing traffic.  Once again
the people move.  No bikes.  The cars they see,
gleaming in movies - nothing else will do.
Veiled and masked, there’s no way they can all
drive, and survive the dust.  There isn’t time.

Next up is Lima. Travel back in time.
Above those teeming streets the mountains rise
in splendour, but the gods who guard them all
have gone.  The ice retreats, retreats again:
more babies, and less water. You can do
the graphs yourself - one up, one down.  You see?

Get out the hardware, let the punters see
the good guys with their laptops, just in time.
Chasing the hurricanes is what they do,
flying and driving, as the windspeeds rise,
measuring risks.  Sure, it will come again,
this superstorm, and it could get us all.

Scenarios.  We see the waters rise
and fall;  what floats?  Decision time again,
but which one do we do?  We do them all.