La Fin de ce Monde

Overture

It is the best of times for extreme weather, It is the worst of times for human kind.

The darkness is creeping upon us; Yet the Sun still shines on Earth.

A strand of light, travels at a
Constant speed towards a planet that was Constrained by its inhabitants, whose hearts Corrupted and actions to be
Corrected.

This light merely pierces
The boundlessness of the universe,
But it pierces the parochial human heart.

This light comes from a space shuttle Travelling to Earth,
Sending a nostalgic old man in his final days.

He is Not As
Selfish As

The ones abandoned the Earth,
Who will surely soon become phantoms on Mars.

He looks at the monitor anxiously,
Anticipating his landfall at 6 a.m., March 21, 2115, At 90ºN on the Arctic Ocean.
It is his last wish to see the blue marble again.

He remembers that five years ago, he was amongst
The last people to step onto the emigration ship, as a meteorologist. Not because he wants to, but because he has the privilege to Elude from the hazardous home.

Eight billion people,
Two thousand fled to Mars. Are they lucky?
Are they cowards?

Reluctantly, guiltily, and desperately, He left.

Now he is back.

In a canyon where glaciers used to flow,
He stand in silent tribute to those who perished In the ongoing sixth extinction
And the scarred Earth.

“It is not the Earth, but ourselves we need to save. The Earth thrived through many extinctions; However, we will be the victims.”
He has not forgotten his warning half a century ago.

Towering at the North Pole, he confesses when
The sun rises once a year on March Equinox.
The call of spring marks the end of the half-year night And the beginning of the half-year brightness.
Just as usual, regardless of human existence.

Working in the field as a meteorologist,
He appreciates the ever changing weather.
In the early days of combating climate change, He kept a diary of data wide in range.

To him, standing in extreme weather observing
And being amazed by the forces of nature are trivial. Yet aging, deeply immersed in his confession,
He was not able to sense the coming cyclone.

Tropical cyclones accelerate into the Arctic,
A scene you only see in the 22nd century on Earth.

The wind picks up the dust,
Also picking up his lost memories...

Vento Allegro

Have you seen the 4 a.m. sky Of Shanghai
On the day of typhoon landfall?

The city loses its resplendence, Suffocating under a dark dome, A dome of storm.

A typhoon he has monitored,
Awaits him with the awe-inspiring power.

As the storm traverses through Shanghai,
He traverses across the city on a metro line. He sees
Empty seats and empty stations.
A scene of solitude spawned by the early morning and the typhoon.

In the middle of the typhoon lies an eye of charm, Of the glory of Nature and the Creator,
Of perfect geometry and unpredictable dynamics.

It is an eye of beauty
And an eye of destruction.

L'Oeil

An eye so furious that burns in pain, The tears ooze like blood or rain in vain.

’Tis a window of his soul cannot be broken, But the haze of battle and Time wore it down At such young age, a grief not spoken.

He attempts to relieve the hurt in frown.

No more than three days of sun Last in the three months of winter. Towards the fire, the spring, we run, And no more dark and damp hither.

Rough sea is the home of wanderer:

In thunder he roars to claim isolation;

In company, the sail summons conquerors Like a runic streamer veils soul in desolation.

Plateau “Maestoso”

What misery is this, when the true North waits for its snow. Finally it arrives, appears from rain, amorphous and slow.

On the field wide and wild,
Where the Khans rode with shield, Grains of dust and grains of snow Marched faster in the blow
Of west winter wind
And sandstones fling.

Raging storm forms a brutal front, Cold-blooded arrows not blunt.
Chaos as wide as the border,
Flesh and passion froze like water.
Pressure higher than the beacon towers, Would surely crush the Great Wall in hours.

Preludio di Requiem

Have you seen the dawn of the North? Not of the Arctic Ocean, but of the Arctic icecap Before the hundred-year meltdown.

When he was a child, he imagined the taiga
As eight-story-tall bent popsicles with sugar icing on them. He could hear snowflakes kissing the ground and the roof, Gentle and serene.

Winter, an epic artist,
Sprinkled the magic fairy-tale white powder on everything.

Paradiso.

But there was no winter anymore. Winter freezes in Lethe,
Forever forgotten.

A splash of light;
A blasting bass drum sound oscillated the tranquil sky.

He woke from his dream agitatedly, Not from the thunder,
But this masterpiece of nature.
It reminds him of

The Prologue of disasters decades ago, The Epilogue of humankind.

Torrential rain is the Tear of Earth; Crippling wind is the Cry of Earth.

Grey sky. Grey sea. Grey land.

When he stands in the front of the entrance to hell, It was unexpectedly peaceful and tranquil.

There was no sound except the falling soot. There was no colour except the dark dome. There was no feeling except the gravity.

Dense fog hovers over the smooth beaches Where land and ocean,
The two forces of nature
Touch.

In the freezing rain, frantic history and ferocious climate Froze into fragile memory,
Forever kept on this fugitive field.

Seeing the snow again is his last will.

His hands trembling in the rain, His bones aching in the wind, His heart shattering...

It is cold,
But it will never be cold enough to snow now. Even at the North Pole.

Requiem

What have we done to the Earth?

On his weather diary,
He wrote his last confession:

Why is there no repulsion, nor guilt, nor remorse When we see each other?
Simple avoidance stirs my thoughts.
Is it fair, or do I dare? To love again, That planet which I dearly miss after seeing her again. A dangerous thought, that is, at the time of the darkness,
When time doth not flow with the will of light.
Day to day until a ray of sun brings the spring, There we rejoice and seek if Mars be true.
O, How I miss the snow under winter’s dome, Before the knell of warming,
Where man and Earth share sense and whence. On the home our hands destroyed,
Do I stay, do I go, or do I return?
Desperation. In the escalation of tension Between Man and Nature, Man stands no chance.

O thou forgive me now, The fair Earth.

Gaia,
Take me to thy embrace.

Le monde est entré dans un nouveau millénaire.

“It is a test [that] genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”

— T. S. Eliot, from the essay "Dante."

“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.” 

— Percy Bysshe Shelley, from A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays

“Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”

— William Wordsworth, from "Preface to Lyrical Ballads."

“Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity—it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.”

— John Keats, from On Axioms and the Surprise of Poetry