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Ovid on Climate Change

By Eliza Griswold b. 1973 Eliza Griswold

Bastard, the other boys teased him,

till Phaethon unleashed the steeds

of Armageddon. He couldn’t hold

their reins. Driving the sun too close

to earth, the boy withered rivers,

torched Eucalyptus groves, until the hills

burst into flame, and the people’s blood

boiled through the skin. Ethiopia,

land of burnt faces. In a boy’s rage

for a name, the myth of race begins.

NOTES: Read the Q&A with Eliza Griswold about this poem

Source: Poetry (December 2012).

Biography

Eliza Griswold is a poet and reporter whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, and the New Republic. Her books include the poetry collection Wideawake Field (2007) and the non-fiction title The Tenth Parallel (2010), which examines Christianity and Islam in Asia and Africa. In 2010, Griswold won the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome for her poetry, and in 2011, . . .

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