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Classroom Politics

Copyright R. N. Taber 1999; rev. 2021
[Note: This poem was first published in my collection, Love and Human Remains, Assembly Books, 2000; the poem has recently been revised, August, 2021.]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

OVERHEARD:
            MAN: “Don’t talk to me about climate change. If you ask me, it’s a load of rubbish. Youngsters, today, huh! Never happy unless that can find something to whinge about. Take this Extinction Rebellion lot, a bunch of troublemakers if you ask me...”
            WOMAN: “I’m not so sure. I mean, well, what do any of us actually know about what’s causing such high temperatures in Greece, wildfires in Australia, worsening weather conditions all over...?”
            MAN: “Oh, well, the planet’s here to stay for a good while yet, so time enough to worry when and if the time comes, that’s what I say...”

When and if the time comes...? Better to be safe then sorry, surely, and the sooner we all start doing our bit to save the planet, the better its chances of survival... and ours. That’s what yours truly says, thinks, and tries to practise what I preach as best I can...

The poem below was written over twenty years ago, and my inner ear told me even then that young people were already beginning to express various Green and Climate concerns.

Classroom Politics or Extinction Rebellion

Murmurs in the classroom
smack of revolution

Stuck in front of a television,
well able to tell fact from fiction,
the problem being,
where on earth to draw the line
between what we love
to watch over endless cups of tea
while and rejecting
whatever it may be giving us cause
to suspect our sense of pleasure more than
a shade unhealthy

Murmurs in the classroom
smack of revolution

Made to sit back and watch
our home planet being set upon;
little if any regard for nature
whose best interests are ill-served
by those of Big Business
despite any public relations exercise
performed by Fat Cats
keen to exploit media attention,
all the better to disguise a hidden agenda
of mass destruction

Murmurs in the classroom
smack of revolution

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