Cassandra Weeps Poem by Michael Nabert

Cassandra weeps
eyes brimming with dark tidings
of true horrors to come,
able to forecast truthfully,
to know tomorrow
as thoroughly as a lover
and yet cursed by Apollo
that no one
shall heed her warnings.
Preventable miseries,
families broken,
cities destroyed,
she beseeches,
offers real hope:
'This dour fate can be changed!
This pain need not be! '
The mighty hear her,
laugh at her,
spit on her,
and go on to suffer
precisely as she spake it.
She foretells the end of empires,
warns the Rapa Nui of Easter Island
not to cut down that last tree,
then gets her dress tacky with sap
sitting mournful on its stump
as their civilization passes.
She warns Alexander of imminent fever,
Aztecs of coming Spaniards,
First Nations of Europe's ships' approach,
all for naught.
Today
she speaks through
every professional academy of sciences
on the face of the Earth
about our changing climate.
Her voice echoes
in dire warnings from military intelligence experts,
all of the world's insurance agencies,
its thermometers and satellites,
a majority of the world's people,
in seasonal changes to
plant blooming schedules
and animals everywhere
changing migration patterns,
in pregnant rainclouds loosing deluges,
wildfires gleefully consuming countrysides,
in silent last gasps of drought slain crops,
all unheeded,
arrogance's ears eternally blocked
to her truth laid bare all around us.
She closes her eyes tight
like a fist
as the tears leak out,
praying that her long ago slight
to a capricious deity's ego
be at last forgiven,
that she might not be forced to watch
the coming avalanche of endings
and yet still she sees.
Even with her eyes closed
she cannot look away
from what those with power
continue to refuse to see
until far
far
too late.