The Hanged Man

At the time of writing to you

The sun sets over Sydney Harbour

Bizet’s Carmen bursts out on the water

Full moon rises over the bridge

Valentines clink glasses and part

     Clink glasses and part

In Melbourne a southerly blows across the bay

The mercury drops to thirty

Madame Sosostris sets The Lovers alight

Fireworks explode in the sky

Rainbows spread over the face of the moon

                    And rub out the stars

Ropes of rain drop on Esperance

Pods of pilot whales shore up to die on Farewell Spit

Cascading waters bite into America’s tallest dam

Everywhere on the planet lakes fill with fish doped on antidepressants

Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood II (non-fiction) is released

In Paris refugees huddle together outside the Sacré Coeur where cleaners slip them Halal baguettes

In London a Tory student films himself burning a £20 in front of a homeless man

In Manhattan the Statue of Liberty cringes

At the time of writing

George Orwell has just published Twenty Seventeen (non-fiction)

At the time of writing

Maryam Mizakhani dons no Jihab but wins the Nobel Prize for mathematics

At the time of writing

China prepares for war

North Korea fires missiles into the Sea of Japan

Syria and Afghanistan bury their new dead

At the time of writing

The planet is tilting off its axis

Coal-fired power plants belch

Robotic bees are born

At the time of writing

I want to kill time

Forget all possible endings to the world

Remember the boy who launched off his bike on the gravel way

back when we were immortal

At the time of writing

Death has achieved her majority

Madame Sosostris grants you eternity

I tuck away the Hanged Man’s card

Dominique Hecq

Works Cited:

Atwood, M., The Year of the Flood, Vintage, Toronto, 2010

Eliot, T. S., Collected Poems 1909–1962, Faber & Faber, London, 1963

Orwell, G., Nineteen Eighty Four, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1984