The World Is Too Much With Us
—after William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us. Late and soon
it’s morning, phone in hand, and a screen on my wrist powers
on to report the no rest I had. News, a tragedy—so easily ours—
already breaking as I crack my eggs. Rage and prayers, rage and prayers, a boon
for the tycoon’s fear-campaign, clicks for the zillionaire buying up the moon.
Ad, ad, an AI figment, someone squawking, someone hawking—hours
consumed, of this only life, and who is left in the garden, who is tending the flowers?
I am trying to hear the birdsong through the auto-tune
of all this ubiquitous engineered crooning, but a podcast informs me silence will be
extinct by the weekend, gone like thought and the good kind of alone. Peace is outworn;
it’s chaos that feeds the algorithm, no likes for the actual, the tangible. No lea
without a billboard promising Hell as if it isn’t here. But don’t be forlorn,
I’m sold—the world is yours! (after this ad) unending and enhanced on a screen. Don’t mind the sea
at the door. Time for a selfie, suggests my phone. A filter. I can add (for free!) horns.
■
—after William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us. Late and soon
it’s morning, phone in hand, and a screen on my wrist powers
on to report the no rest I had. News, a tragedy—so easily ours—
already breaking as I crack my eggs. Rage and prayers, rage and prayers, a boon
for the tycoon’s fear-campaign, clicks for the zillionaire buying up the moon.
Ad, ad, an AI figment, someone squawking, someone hawking—hours
consumed, of this only life, and who is left in the garden, who is tending the flowers?
I am trying to hear the birdsong through the auto-tune
of all this ubiquitous engineered crooning, but a podcast informs me silence will be
extinct by the weekend, gone like thought and the good kind of alone. Peace is outworn;
it’s chaos that feeds the algorithm, no likes for the actual, the tangible. No lea
without a billboard promising Hell as if it isn’t here. But don’t be forlorn,
I’m sold—the world is yours! (after this ad) unending and enhanced on a screen. Don’t mind the sea
at the door. Time for a selfie, suggests my phone. A filter. I can add (for free!) horns.
■
Hello Friends,
Today’s poem, “The World Is Too Much With Us” by Leila Chatti, was first featured as a Poem-a-Day on poets.org in 2026. “The World Is Too Much With Us” is also the title of a famous sonnet by William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850), which you can read here.
Chatti explains how she based her poem on Wordsworth both in content and form: “I wrote this poem after reading William Wordsworth’s because it would not leave my mind. How are we grappling with the same problems, two hundred years later? There’s so much disconnect in our world, so much wrong being done, and for terrible reasons. As Wordsworth writes in his original, ‘We have given our hearts away.’ I wanted to write an echo of sorts, a response to his poem for our current time, so I used his first line and all of the same end words, in their original order.”
I hope you’re enjoying poetry month! Thank you for celebrating poetry with me.
— Ællen
Today’s poem, “The World Is Too Much With Us” by Leila Chatti, was first featured as a Poem-a-Day on poets.org in 2026. “The World Is Too Much With Us” is also the title of a famous sonnet by William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850), which you can read here.
Chatti explains how she based her poem on Wordsworth both in content and form: “I wrote this poem after reading William Wordsworth’s because it would not leave my mind. How are we grappling with the same problems, two hundred years later? There’s so much disconnect in our world, so much wrong being done, and for terrible reasons. As Wordsworth writes in his original, ‘We have given our hearts away.’ I wanted to write an echo of sorts, a response to his poem for our current time, so I used his first line and all of the same end words, in their original order.”
I hope you’re enjoying poetry month! Thank you for celebrating poetry with me.
— Ællen