SENATORS’ STATEMENTS — Canadian Youth Climate Assembly

Honourable senators, I rise today to recite a poem in both English and French.

This poem was written for the members of the Canadian Youth Climate Assembly by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate, the talented Winnipeg poet and lawyer Chimwemwe Undi, on the occasion of the first citizens’ assembly on climate in Canada and the first in the world to target 18- to 25-year-olds.

The poem was expertly translated by Marie Frankland.

The members of the Canadian Youth Climate Assembly presented their report in this chamber a year ago and are continuing their work.

Now for Chimwemwe’s poem “Pyrocumulus”:

Like the heat throughout July, the premonitions

became commonplace. Weeks of atmospheric haze

purple blots on the interactive map.

That summer slipped past the window as it shrank.

Our displaced neighbours bore the burden of our idleness.

A new black snake split the land, every inch

a betrayal. Like a spell, we once believed

that the right angle of the truth had to work,

would spur us to change, spark the necessary awakening,

and convey the horizon’s proximity.

Now, we know hope is the thing with gritted teeth,

a panic room doomed to repeat:

our finite time is waning, like the light

and, look, there’s so much left we have to do.