Michael -- this is great, and what I like most about it is the subtlety with which the speaker is characterized as a climate-change-denier who cannot see the relationship between cause and effect. You take a lot of care to not make this point overt, which really adds to the reading experience for me. It's also what makes your consistent use of the pathetic fallacy so effective. The world is full of people who are fully aware of consequences, but are willfully ignorant to the causes.
Anyhow, I think the content here works very well. The "Fox" reference in S1L9 might tip your hand a bit too much too early, but maybe that's necessary. Might you consider moving it to the next stanza -- swap out with the S2 couplet? Regardless, I do wonder if it should be so prominent that it's an end-rhyme in the first stanza.
I would far prefer S1L1 to read "Once this was" rather than "This once was" -- it feels a bit awkward to me how it is now.
The "within" in S2L9 is bugging me too. Obviously "There's something wrong in our universe" impacts the meter, so that's out...but perhaps you can find another word for "wrong." I was thinking "rotten" ("There's something rotten in our universe") which has a nice echo of Hamlet, but you use "rotted" earlier, so perhaps not. Either way, "within" just feels off.
That's about it. To my eye, it's mostly done as is, but I'm guessing some tweaks can only improve it.
EDITED TO ADD: After reading Jim's comments, I took another look and realized that making my S1L1 change disrupts the parallel structure with the first lines of other stanzas. I still feel the syntax of the all-important first line is a little off, but on second thought, it's more of a quibble than a complaint.
|