As I walked around the deck of the Marco Polo and thought about the immense changes that have taken place in the last two hundred years I kept reworking this poem.
I’ve travelled through oceans that once teemed with life and are now empty.
I visited islands where British ships replenished their larders by bludgeoning to death all the indigenous creatures.
Two hundred years ago life teemed. Now it is hanging on by its talons.
I am aging in fits and starts on a slow decline towards an inevitable death. The planet is on a similar trajectory.
In the next two hundred years we will have paved it all, caged what’s left and be living in an artificial, plastic paradise, as free as any good consumer can be.
Take me back to where I can breathe and wonder. I want out of this nightmare.
Take me back to
Take me back to the African plains;
Away from the bombs of the insane;
Away from the craziness of god’s refrain;
Away from the missiles and blood stains;
Away from every human brain;
All the bones of the animals we have slain;
The trees that rot where they’re lain.
I’d send the whole lot down the drain
And start over again.
So I could wonder at the universe
In one sand grain
And find the will
To refrain
From slaughter.
Opher 22.2.2016
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Many things are beyond our understanding – such as how a bunch of chemicals have come to think and speak, to wonder and emote.
Many things are beyond our comprehension such as the infinite nature of the universe, the vastness of space, the enormity of matter and the unending nature of time.
