Ecocide

Earth mother, earth daughter, would that you had been earth father, earth son,
for then, the males of romance would not have praised your nourishment as endless,

for then, the men of reason would not have deduced your body an irrational chaos,
something to be tackled, harnessed, steered, cashed, capitalized.

Having trod your flowers, drugged your fruit, razed your rainforests,
we now bring their aromas into our homes—as therapy.
Having diverted your streams, collapsed your waterfalls, soiled your seas,
we now bring their music into our living rooms—to calm us.

7 Comments

  1. Thank you Stephen! You’ve expressed in 8 lines what some people have tried to capture with entire books. (I should know: it feels like I’m reading all of them these days!)

  2. Have you watched Howl yet, Stephen? I particularly liked Ginsberg’s definition of prophesy…watch for it. Just ordered th DVD and a copy of the orignal mss for my daugter at U of A studing to teach English. Does the need to name ever become irrelevant?

    More of my silliness: http://frackingcanada.blogspot.com/

    Peace

    Craig

  3. Thank you for this. I wonder all of the time, why has it come to this? Greed yes, but also good things, innovation, creation, new discoveries and technologies. Creation out of destruction over and over again. So what do we do? I guess we can only love and try to protect what is left.

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