BBC photo
He told me hundreds of camels are dying
in the drought near his home village;
he is moved by the faces of the pastoralists
on the evening news,
he is moved by the faces of the pastoralists
on the evening news,
dragging their carcasses and feeding them
with cartons. He says the government
is trying to plant trees, but there is no rain.
This is our predicament: that those who
have caused the least climate damage
are suffering the most.
Our time will come, we, in our monster
homes, with our gigantic trucks, living large
while the world turns and burns.
I wrote back that in our melting north,
polar bears are starving, too,
for lack of ice on which to hunt,
for lack of ice on which to hunt,
until all that is left when they finally,
mercifully die, is their skin.
How does the mind compute such things?
How keep from despair, when the
Talking Heads talk on sonorously
and half-asleep, their eyes fixed
only as far as the next election?
Out my window, at this moment,
all is calm, serene. The waves
are wild right now at the beach,
the sun is bright. In a world so beautiful,
how can so many be suffering?
What kind of species are we
to have had free choice, and everything
we needed to survive,
and to have created this?
and to have created this?
Jesus wept, the good book says.
I think he must be weeping still.
Sealegacy/Caters News
For earthweal where we are contemplating Ministering the Future, and turning a radical edge or corner in a poem. Today's email exchange with my young poet friend in Africa sparked this response. Everywhere, the most innocent are suffering the most.
That's a great close to this poem, Sherry. To have the choice and yet to mess up so badly, is truly the most ridiculous thing!
ReplyDelete"Jesus wept" is the radical turn here? A radical grief? He also whipped the moneylenders out of the Temple and sacrificed his deity ... but it starts with the weeping.
ReplyDeleteHumans definitely have made a mess with their free choices. Our time will come indeed!
ReplyDelete