On the night I visited the Antony Gormley exhibition at the R A (Royal Academy of Arts) in London

Asleep inside the courtyard on a tile,
an iron baby lies in foetal pose,
alone outdoors, deceivingly fragile,
attracting open praise, demanding close

inspection: rugged surface, solid core
cast less than seven days after her birth,
quiescent, still, an archetypal store
of human might, connected to the Earth —

and she’s defiant, boasting in her silence
that something small can conquer any size,
that mettle is the owner of the distance
which separates the humble from the prize.

…What if the prize was saving our own Planet?
I hear a whisper: she suggests we plan it.