The Air was three Degrees and still.
The Sky had swept itself of Cloud
As if it wished to see quite clear
What Mortals do when not allowed
To look away. The March light fell
On Amherst like a Verdict, bare.
And I, who seldom leave my Room,
Found all the World was already there.
I.
They sent nine hundred Drones at once
Across the Ukrainian night:
Nine hundred, like a Swarm of Thought
That will not grant the Mind respite.
Eight Souls were taken, dozens maimed.
The Cities lit with other Fire.
And somewhere, in a Basement dark,
A Mother counted one notch higher.
I wonder: do the Drones have Eyes?
And if they do, what do they see?
The Rooftop where a Child once played?
The Garden with its single Tree?
War is not the Cannon's Mouth.
War is what the Silence learns
After, when the Smoke has cleared,
And no one comes, and no one returns.
II.
Two Pilots died at LaGuardia.
Their Plane met Fire Truck on the Ground.
The Controllers cleared them both at once,
And neither heard the other's Sound.
A Flight Attendant, flung like Seed
A hundred Metres from the Wreck,
Survived. Her Daughter called it Grace.
I call it what I always call
The narrow space between the Gone
And those who linger just enough
To tell us what the Dying saw
Before the World blew out like Snuff.
III.
The Strait of Hormuz chokes with Ships
That dare not pass, or dare too much.
Iran declares the "non-hostile" safe:
But who defines a friendly Touch?
Oil at one hundred fifty, said
The Man from BlackRock, brings Collapse.
The Philippines declared Emergency.
In India, the Pumps have Gaps
Where People stand in Lines that stretch
Like Sentences without a Period.
And Plastic Packaging costs more.
The World grown strange and nearly storied.
In Asia, Fuel is rationed thin.
Each Drop: a Coin of liquid Gold.
The War in Persia tips the Scales,
And distant Hearths grow strangely Cold.
IV.
A Jury said that Meta harmed
The Children. Three hundred seventy-five
Million Dollars for the young
Whose Innocence did not survive
The Algorithm's patient Eye
That watched, and learned, and watched some more,
And fed them Darkness dressed as Light
Until the Child forgot the Door.
I think of Children as I think
Of Blossoms, easily undone.
A single Frost applied too soon,
And what was opening is gone.
V.
In Congo, in Virunga's Green,
Twin Gorillas, born alive:
The second set in just two Months,
A kind of Miracle to thrive
Where Soldiers march and Mines explode
And Forests shrink like drying Lakes.
Yet Life, in its enormous Will,
Sends Twins. Because it never breaks
Entirely. There is always some
Small Bud beneath the Blackest Ice
That did not get the Memorandum
Saying this World won't suffice.
VI.
The Company called OpenAI
Has shuttered Sora, which could make
A moving Picture from a Word,
A Video for any sake.
And Disney, who once drew by Hand
Each Frame of animated Grace,
Had partnered with the dreaming Machine,
Then watched it vanish without Trace.
I wonder what it means to build
A thing that fabricates the Real,
Then find the Real was never what
The Fabrication could reveal.
Truth is not a moving Image.
Truth is what remains when all
The pretty Pictures have been shown,
And someone asks: was that the Whole?
VII.
In Argentina, fifty Years
Since Generals took the State by Throat,
The Government now cuts the Funds
That kept the Memory afloat.
Revising what the Junta did
As if the Dead could be re-read,
As if a Nation's Wound could heal
By simply saying it never bled.
I know a thing or two of Silence:
How a Drawer can hold a Verse
For Decades, patient as a Bone.
But Silence chosen is not the same
As Silence forced upon a Hearse.
VIII.
A Woman flipped a District Red
To Blue in Florida's warm South,
Where Mar-a-Lago holds its Court
And Power lives by Power's Mouth.
Nineteen Points: the margin was
By which the other Side had won
Before. Now Emily (yes, her Name
Was Emily) undid what seemed so done.
The small Shifts matter most, I think.
The way a single Degree of Frost
Divides the Living from the Dead –
The Found from the permanently Lost.
The Sun is full on Amherst now,
Three Degrees but climbing slow.
The World, I see, has not improved
Since I last checked a Century ago.
The Drones still fly. The Oil still burns.
The Children still are left unguarded.
But Gorillas, twin and breathing, prove
That Life is not so easily discarded.
I close my Curtain. That is all
A Poet in her Room can do:
Arrange the Words and hope they land
On someone who is listening, too.
