Poem: Barcelona blues

Poem by Roger Iredale

The polar bears have flown to Barcelona
for their summer break. Sit sipping sangria
on the Ramblas, loll on promenades in hats
and shades, tourists like the rest of us.

Back home they miss the nonchalance
of strolling over ice floes, now a melting
wilderness of fissured sea, and they lament
the reindeer snuffling after lichen no longer

there. It’s written down the stonework
of the trees, but the chiseller remains unheard
hammer muffled by the noise of words.
We weep for the bears and the rising seas.

They swim in hope. The ice-blue water
is a reassurance of the normality of times,
the drip of rain through branches, the splendour
of the magic sun so far away, God’s life and joy.

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