A Day to Live, a Day to Die: Poetry as a Countdown on Climate
Charlie Lambert’s contributing poem for Project 52 arrives with the kind of quiet force that catches you off guard. It begins not with catastrophe, but with a question many of us have pushed to the edges of our minds: what happens when the countdown on climate change is no longer theoretical? Lambert is struck by how calmly we talk about rising temperatures, melting ice, and failing ecosystems, as though speaking from behind glass. So he takes the conversation to its most uncomfortable, and therefore necessary, place. What if the scientists could name the day? What would we say to our children the night before?
It’s this imagined moment—domestic, intimate, impossibly heavy—that gives the poem its emotional centre. And Lambert builds it with a craftsman’s care. Each stanza closes on the refrain “a day to live, a day to die,” a line that beats like a clock, steady and unavoidable. But as the poem unfolds, that line begins to fade, thinning out, losing substance. It’s not a stylistic flourish; it’s the point. The line disappears like the future it describes, the silence becoming the warning.
Lambert’s shift from journalism to poetry has only sharpened his instinct for clarity. After all, he’s been writing stories since he was twelve, when a Blue Peter badge first confirmed he had something to say. A 45-year career with the Liverpool Echo and the BBC grounded him in the art of watching the world closely—an art he has carried into his poetry since 2016. His work has now travelled through anthologies, open mics, Amnesty events, and readings at the Poetry Society in London.
Originally from Cumbria but a Merseysider since 1971, Lambert writes with the steadiness of someone who has seen stories rise, fall, and return. In this one, he reminds us: the clock isn’t abstract. It’s ticking. And it’s pointing straight at us.
What will YOU do?
Me? I’ll pick up a few clubs
and head for the golf course.
Only me there,
green space everywhere,
unnatural clarity in the sky,
a day to live; a day to die.
And you? No point in doing the shopping,
no deadlines to catch in the office,
production lines stopped,
or just left to rot,
unnatural quiet in the sky,
a day to live, a day to die.
What will you be telling your kids?
The awkward chat to end them all.
Tell them the truth?
Or deny them the proof?
Unnatural chill in the sky,
a day to live, a day to die.
And what of your animals,
your cats, dogs, rabbits, horses, pigs?
Your cows and your sheep –
will you put them to sleep?
Unnatural threat in the sky,
a day to live, a day to die.
Do you have a plan for the day
when the news feeds across the planet
agree that the pitch is unplayable,
that tomorrow life becomes unsustainable?
A shroud starts to cover the sky,
A day to live……
