A Snowstorm Paralyses Sheffield Poem by Michael Maxwell Steer

The wind that beats around my house this wicked night
Flings snow across the northern hills encompassing
Whole cities in an icy paralysis, freezing
Traffic to the road like surreal sculpture
That suspends normality, and suddenly focuses
Modern humans on ancient issues of survival.

Wild on lonely hills they huddled once in lee
of rocks, fierce in their hopeless vulnerability,
So now we, the thin veneer of modern life
Rubbed off, battle against the self-same elements;
The merest flick of a frozen finger forcing
us to huddle in cars with barely more protection.

Yet the ancient hill folk's gruff resilience
Had superior wisdom, for they understood
The majestic indifference of the forces ranged against them,
And moulded an existence round its savagery -

Whereas we imagine ourselves to be the masters
Of our fate, and turn our sneering backs upon
The elemental Gods our forebears once placated …
Bewildered when they reassert their ancient power …
Resourceless when nature declines its allotted role of
Silent unresisting slave to headstrong humans.

Confounded by the ‘modern' arrogance that led us
To discard the age-old answers to recurring
Problems, trusting instead to Gods of wire and carbon:
Do such events as these give pause for thought that under
neath the fragile metal shells which now encase us
the cosmic laws of Tao were never abrogated?


Boxing Night storms 2014