Once Enemies - edit

[milo]

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edit;


Today the Knight of Doleful Countenance
would not assault our giants in the sky– 
those monstrous dandelions whose white arms
of balsa-wood moan deeply as they turn
and often break away, or crash and burn.

Cervantes’ Don Quixote would respect
today’s gaunt windmills’ dated loyalty -
like his to tarnished codes of chivalry -
in still contending with the Giant Warming
whose menace, overblown, has passed away.

I picture him and bony Rosinante
posed with a giant pinwheel, skeletal,
whose day, like theirs, is done while what remains
recalls old loves, arms bravely raised, campaigns
which, long betrayed, still honor lost ideals.

They try so hard one’s soul must sympathize
with wasted effort, industry, good heart
expended in their quest to save a world
conjecturals no longer terrorize,
which neither needs nor wants its rescuers.

---

Sincere thanks to all critics, particularly in pointing out the weakness of the ending and the rather arch failure to actually identify the literary reference.

I particularly enjoyed @milo's initial enjoyment of the poem's concept until the shibboleth being Gored was identified to him.  I would mildly contend that the folly of wind turbines specifically and CAGCC* theory generally can be quite novel if one's current-affairs reading is restricted to progressive/legacy outlets.

An area not addressed (a companion poem, perhaps?) is that Cervantes' Quixote was less an admirable old fool than a haughty and blind one constantly misled by his preconceptions; I've leaned into the modern view of him as a hopeless striver here.  A better (or another) way to work the metaphor would be to see Sancho Panza in the armies of erectors and maintainers who keep the wind turbines turning at great expense and considerable danger to themselves.  What they think of the enterprise - and its committed leaders - is matter for conjecture.

*CAGCC = Catastrophic Althropogenic Global Climate Change

I would have thought it more interesting for the Don to be easily fooled into believing windmills are some plot and not just engineering and capitalism finding a way to deliver energy - it seems more in his personality but then I suppose we would lose the modern change of agency