Tuesday
We’re on our way back from Maine, where temperatures uncharacteristically soared into the upper 90s—and this is mild compared to many parts of the world, which saw triple digit numbers (or numbers over 37.7 C) on their thermometers. Climate change, global warming, and extreme weather events are all alive and well.
Here’s a heat poem by H.D. (a.k.a. Hilda Doolittle) to capture the experience. Overwhelmed by the temperature, she begs the wind to rip the heat apart. The air is so thick, she says, that fruit cannot drop. In other words, it blunts and suffocates everything.
In the final stanza, she imagines cutting through heat like a plough. Heat this intense, she indicates, has the thickness of earth.
Or maybe she imagines herself as Moses cutting through the Red Sea. In any event, she conjures up violent fantasies of relief.
Heat
By H.D.
O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air–
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.
Cut the heat–
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.