If Wordsworth Were Alive Today

by Zack Rogow

Wordsworth, if you were here alive today
In cities of dittoed apartment blocks
Identical as soldiers’ grave-white rocks
What would you think of us? What could you say
Of glaciers turned to ghosts, herons robed in oil,
And gyred tides of polyethylene
That leatherbacks mistake for jellies’ sheen.
I wonder if you’d fly from all this spoil.
Or would you dive into the present mode,
Denounce steam coal, fracked veins, the dollar trap?
Take a day job as an art custodian
And maybe teach yourself software to code
A write-your-own-Romantic-poem app,
While nights you learn to cook Cambodian.


Copyright 2016, Zack Rogow

Zack Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of twenty books or plays. His eighth book of poems, Talking with the Radio: Poems Inspired by Jazz and Popular Music, was published by Kattywompus Press in 2015. He teaches in the low-residency MFA at the University of Alaska Anchorage and serves as poetry editor of Catamaran Literary Reader. www.zackrogow.com


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