UK poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy curates a series of 20 original poems by various authors on the theme of climate change
Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Alamy
Wednesday 27 May 2015 06.30 BST
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A thousand synonyms for wind
make up your song.
Those busy armsmay juggle any number of rumours
going around:
your Swish, for one—
they say it whisks the pool of sleep;
that blades cut holes
in the cloth of dreams;
that shadow-flicker
makes of the sunniest day
a speed-frame motion picture,
and panes of ice, which crystallize
on your frozen wings,
are flung when you turn
(one, it was said, had lodged
like a glass fin
in the roof of a camper van).
*
What’s to be done
to keep your head in the clouds,
your whirling one-track mind,
for the wingers and losers,
raptors, plovers, gulls
batted to the ground?
What’s to be done
about your foot, electric root
beneath an ocean floor
abuzz with armoured
creatures charmed
by your magnetic aura?
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Like my brother’s
distance-defying snaps,
where the London Eye will rest
like a trinket in his palm
or the Tower of Pisa
bend to the slightest pressure
of an index finger,
these turbines
could be a row of daffodils
bordering a lawn, signalling
the spring, as I reach
my hand out
into the perspective,
pluck one like a stem,
raise it to my lips
like a child’s seaside windmill
on a stick, and blow…
Its earfolds fill and spin.
