^{_{This piece was written for the Green Office’s Spring Poetry competition, on the theme: Environmental Guilt, which took place between the months of April-May 2022.}}

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Prometheus gave us humans the fire of life,

The power to sustain ourselves.

3000 years later, are we losing that fire?

While the fires around us are expanding in magnitude

Ours is dying.

While we are doing nothing to protect life,

the wax in our wings is slowly melting until we,

like Icarus,

fall to find our death in the risen ocean overflowing our cities.

Not even worthy of calling them a 21st century Atlantis.

Maybe later survivors will be discussing the story of the sunk city of Amsterdam.

And I feel sorry for the gods,

for their play performed by us on Earth will end soon.

How will they entertain themselves if not watching the miserable lives of the little figures who thought to be the protagonist.

Mon dieu, what will they do if Zeus cannot cheat on Hera,

If Hades has received his last death in Inferno,

If Mars cannot play real life Risk,

And if Apollo has nothing left to make profecies about.

O tempora o mores, Poor Apollo, let me grant you one last prophecy:

For the newspapers merely a few days ago stated that the emergency is increasing,

Guilt is decreasing.

Apollo I am telling you, being the god of art and all that is beautiful and has meaning,

I am telling you this

There will not be a thread of Ariadne this time

Leading us out of the labyrinth of Daedalus, away from the Minotaur

After hearing the selfish "I I I"s and the "meat meat meat"s

I am wondering what Prometheus thinks

I'm dying to know if he still recognises his creation

What would he think?

Ό Διον, what would the Gods think?

But having analysed my audience and noticing that in this 21st century most individuals will not believe in those gods anymore, I will ask you this:

What do you think?