The ice releases a strange landscape. I
Struggle to comprehend such change, a seal
Stuffed full of fish, warm blubber apt to feel
With whiskers for a secret passing by.
All that the world is is a silent cry.
Somewhere a whale descends, somewhere a keel
Carves up the surface, someone is a meal
For someone else, a walrus dons a tie,
A lobster gets elected, shrimps protest,
A warmer current steals into the bay,
The penguin says the parrot has things best
And bit by bit the known world melts away.

Meanwhile my whiskers pick up this refrain:
Everything is what was come round again.

.

This is a Petrarchan sonnet, one of my favourite forms of verse. The rhyming scheme gives it a rich structure abbaabba cdcd ee, which is very useful for exploring ideas. The basic theme here is of a world that is periodically recreated, but with a slight change each time. It is an ancient notion, explored for instance by the great Irish poet W.B.Yeats. I think we all get a sense of eternal recurrence after just a few years listening to the news. The crimes, wars, catastrophes and scandals are the same we were told about before. Only the names are different.