Let us not go gentle into that bad night
of back-to-the-dark-ages darkness,
no humanity, no beauty, no light
and the threat of extinction upon us.
Life here feels like the far, far north
in winter, up near the arctic,
shadows etched in charcoal, drenched in ink─
twenty-four-hour darkness.
All that is creepy-crawly about night
is being visited on us every day
like Germany ’38: neighbors kidnapped off our streets,
disappeared, sent away.
Everything that makes life bearable,
love, nature, knowledge, art
much less the ability to eat
is under fiendish assault by the Lords of Night.
The fortified medieval castle
is their role model:
chastity belts, the rack, the plague,
the Inquisition, the Crusades.
The Lords seem indestructible
but they are not: if millions of good people
brave the moat, surround the castle
and refuse to leave till the Draculas are gone
we can be the dawn
that ends the long, long night.