“An Update to Robert Frost, ‘Fire and Ice’,” 2024.

In recent weeks, I have facetiously been telling my friends that we really don’t have to worry about all the horrible things going on in the world right now, or worry about our aging bodies and all our aches and pains. Climate change is here, I would say, and the world as we know it is going to come to an end. And this got me thinking about Robert Frost’s 1923 poem “Fire and Ice” and thinking about an update. I’ve tried to keep to the same rhyming and metrical scheme (okay, one slant rhyme!), but, unlike Frost, I’m no real poet. But here it is:

Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice,” 1923

Some say the world will end in fire, 

Some say in ice.

For what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

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“An Update to Robert Frost, ‘Fire and Ice’,” 2024.

Some may try climate change to deny,

But it is here.

As we pump more carbon into the sky,

The temperature’s rising, we can’t deny.

The worst is coming, the end is near.

Droughts and floods, the forests burn,

Fire and ice, as Frosty feared.

We never learn

Oh dear, oh dear.