Halfway through the month of October’s poetry challenge I thought I’d write a poem to commemorate getting halfway through Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror, The Calamitous Fourteenth Century.
Learning From The Dark Ages
…
An ice age kicked off the dark 14th century
Froze up the water
Famine a looming
War with England, France’s undoing
Earthquake struck
They thought it God’s dooming
…
A hundred year war, and rodents were toting
A plague that killed droves
But the Church, forgiveness controlling
And divisions took toll on instead of the grace
Some lost their hope ever so slowly
Turned many away from the joy of the faith
…
High style the shoe was ever so pointy
Held by chain right to the knee
The king captured, knights unchivalrous bolted
Blaming, the peasants, how they revolted,
Starving and frozen no bread in their oven
The vests that they wore, the jacquerie
…
Now in our T-shirts and scruffy blue jeans
Dependent to shop for everything
Don’t know to sew to make us some clothes
Bake our own bread, we grub hub by phone
Do we read books or binge watch YouTube’s
Kittens and puppies hedgehogs and squirrels
…
What are we teaching our boys and our girls
Between soccer karate and parent board meetings
To work and to play at all a fast pace
iPhones glowing our proud selfie face
Did we vote in the last governors’ race
Beware the lights dimming for another dark age
…
~Julie Robinson
It’s a big pendulum; methinks it is on the backswing also.
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Speaking of which I’ve got a teen just read the Pit and the Pendulum reminded me was all the perspective of a rat. Not sure why I think that’s cool in the light of your comment but I do…
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