Poetry – An Endless Poem – a poem of despair.
An Endless Poem
Everywhere I look there are people, slums, dirt, garbage and beauty. Such a short while ago the planet was so huge, the great oceans a voyage of years and the endless jungles impenetrable. The waters were pure and life in such teeming abundance that we took it all for granted. Beauty was extant.
Beauty is there but it is on the run. Where it is preserved it is tidied up and served up to be consumed and devoured by the hordes. Nowhere is inaccessible. We are a sphere of tourist attraction.
And still the numbers grow.
Every time I hear of a new vaccine or scientific invention that will save countless lives I sigh. The one thing we do not need is more people. Perhaps the plague would be preferable?
I do not like feeling that. On the personal level I can appreciate the agony of sickness and death, particularly for our children. I am filled with compassion. I would sacrifice anything for mine. But I fear we are sacrificing the world and it is too high a price.
There are too many of us.
What was once endless is now palpably limited. Yet we continue to plunder, destroy, slaughter and pollute as if it was infinite.
In my short life I have witnessed destruction of the environment on an industrial scale. The common become rare or extinct and the wilderness tamed.
The world has changed from an infinite universe to a tiny ball in space.
Still our numbers grow, nature is destroyed and we carry on mindlessly.
An Endless Poem
Endless seas
To sail to infinity and over the edge
To dump our garbage and swill
With ease.
Endless skies
To carry the sighs of our smoke
And the winds would carry off ours woes
And cries.
Endless trees
Forests like oceans of waving pleas
To chop and clear and burn
As we please.
Endless water
For our industrial waste to sully
The crystal clear gully with sour taste
And never falter
Endless meat
To tease and tame, butcher and kill
To have our fill and leave to rot
Not eat.
Endless room
To spread into and conquer
Wilderness and forest both incur
The gloom.
Endless life
To squander, waste and fill
With party kisses, frivolity without taste
And strife.
But now it is our numbers that are endless
Our technology that reduces space and time
We have machines to commit any crime
Endless has an end and is far less.
Opher 19.1.2015
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