O thou, most lovely snow, who in thy seeming purity
Wouldst hide doom's sickle, that silently cuts
Across the last sacred threshold of futurity,
Your death so subtle, so remote, we would miss it but!
Right now I hear the roar of B1 bombers in arctic skies
From which our beloved plastic falls with lovely snow,
And no one asked us if we thought that any of this was wise --
I mean to fall asleep and let the planet go!
Ah, those lovers of war, caught up in their passion,
It would be so cruel to say No more!
And deny them the ecstasy of their obsession
With any damn thing that has to do with war!
And so the plastic snow falls far from any nation
Where a ballerina dances for the balance of creation.
................This sonnet conflates three stories (from BBC World News) about the far north: (1) B1 bombers flying missions over the Arctic, to intimidate Russia (2) scientists detect plastic in snow falling in the Arctic (3) A Russian ballerina dances solo on a frozen harbor in Finland, from the ballet "Swan Lake", to protest plans to turn the harbor, where wild swans nest, into a shipping depot for fossil fuel.
.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-56300514
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