There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.

—from Nate White’s answer to the question posted on Quora.com, “Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?”

It’s difficult to write about President Trump without sounding Trumpish, so I tend to go indirectly, as in today’s poem that takes off with a quote from “Kubla Khan.” But recently a friend forwarded Nate White’s answer to a question about why some British people disliked Donald Trump posted to question-and-answer website Quora.com. A quote from it is above. I imagine that by now many of you have read it, but as a favor for those who haven’t, you can just google “Nate White on Trump” and it will come up. I don’t even know if Nate White’s a real person, but his answer is so humorously thorough and filled with Swiftian hyperbole it’s grimly delightful.

On the other hand, I know that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a real poet, and one day, reading again one of Trump’s bland denials of science and global warming, I thought of Coleridge’s great poem, which he called a “Vision in a Dream,” and began bringing them together. I used the rondeau form, which allowed me to find half-rhymes for “liar,” which was fun. I added a quote from “Kubla Khan” so you can see where the poem comes from.

Climate Change: A Dream

By a sunless sea the Chief began

to tweet predawn upon the can

Then he rises phones his lawyer

to sue someone who called him liar—

some Muslim guy some Taliban

Plus these concerns: the Mexican

who plays the judge the women

who call him Groper-Leerer

from a Sunless Sea

Ignored by him the ice-caps ran

from Greenland pouring toward Japan