Council of Canadians Poetry Recital

On February 4, about 60 Londoners met at the Central Branch of the London Public Library to participate in “A Town Hall on the Future of Canada”, hosted by the Council of Canadians and the London and District Labour Council. 

Speakers on organized labour, public health, the environment, and social justice and militarism presented the ongoing and interrelated crises facing people living in Canada today. But they also presented an alternative vision based on community connection and a call to action to change the trajectory of the Canadian state and its continual onslaught of policies and legislation against the working class. 

To introduce this event, Siddhartha Maheshwari presented two original poems – “Time and tide” and “Danaus Plexippus, Symbolum Maximus” – that the Antler River Media Co-operative is pleased to share with readers.

Time and tide

Aplenty
There’s opportunity
and determination
Someday, humanity will be cosmic
We are trees without roots
Falling over our own ambition
Blind to all but sight
We look to you, all you constitute
Every ‘cosm, micro and macro
To epitomize desire
We yearn, counter to reality
Persistence, akin to Devil’s Snare
Acceptance is not surrender
Forward is not up
These tools and contraptions,
we have birthed to understand you
But if we turn inward
They can spark revelation
and indemnify exploration
Like the dome that surrounds us
We can thrive, but we must first survive
You see crisis and wonder why
When we have the remedy
Denial and space, are both our escape
My planetary ode is personification
My plea is internalization
There are galaxies within us
and forces that connect us
We can be dreamers
Our goals are utopic
Even a tedious path
Will place us on the stars
So we burrow and dig deep
To find the launching pad that will set us free.

Danaus Plexippus, Symbolum Maximus

I love seeing monarchs fall

Reeking of entitlement and vanity

For what their kind did to mine

Their suffering validates mine


They are tigers and wanderers

Milkweeds and black-veined browns

It was an insult to cosmic balance

Equating them to the scourge of humanity


Evoking grandeur and gravitas

I see the semblance with royalty

Protected by the subjects

Rewarding them with dreams


Habitats plundered and razed

Banding Jekyll and Hyde (human and beast)

Transcending understanding- they become ideas

We’ll immortalize them when all else fails


The heat death is inevitable

So we pursue our own

This moment will be primordial history

When they spark revolution


I trust, I plead with space and time

To see them rise again

Already, the Monarchs carry on

It is us who have fallen. 


Tiger, I look for your ferocity

Wanderer, I search for your freedom

Milkweed, I yearn for your color

Black-veined brown, I know you’ll save me.