The poet known as Brendan is doing a new link-up at DesperatePoets.com. Participants are collectively addressed as Desperados. Well, most of us are acquainted at least with one another's poems. The link is:
After being steered there by the (linked) poem that ends "Is that desperate / Enough?" I started thinking of a self-indulgent poem of desperation. It refers to glyphosate, and politics, and COVID complications, and other things. Regular readers know; others don't want to know.
There is a perception that Christian poets don't write expressions of desperation. The prophet Jeremiah, who is generally believed to have had a Christian vision, would not have agreed. His equivalent of a poetry chapbook is generally known as the Book of Lamentations. Jeremiah lived in extremely interesting--as in desperate--times, and he wrote lines that howl themselves off the page.
I've never seen a lovelier Spring;
All four of the iris beds have blooms.
My throat is clogged and cannot sing.
My friends are resting in their tombs.
No help will come from governments.
I've never seen a lovelier Spring.
Defend the people? No pretence.
(Before they die, some say, swans sing.)
The news each morning's headlines bring:
Civilization's suicide.
I've never seen a lovelier Spring.
God might yet choose to turn the tide.
Some people's help's worst harm of all.
The Queen is dead. God help the King!
The world will gladly help us fall.
I've never seen a lovelier Spring.
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