All the World Was Broken [dactylic pentameter version] Light and more light: in the dawning of days it was kindled; Upward on weightless and luminous pinions God sent them, Barbary doves in their beauty and confident ravens, Great-winged condors majestically circling heaven. Over the broad and immeasurable grasslands he set there Wild sheep ranging, and bison of powerful shoulder, Also the forests with splendid eucalyptus standing, Firs everlasting and dark with their purple

All the World Was Broken [blank verse version] 4th October - World Animal Day Light and more light: the first of days began. To soar on weightless wings of air, God made Fair barbary doves and cocksure ravens, And mighty condors wheeling through the sky. For broad grass prairies he made wild sheep there, And bison strong of shoulder, white-tailed deer. For forests too he fashioned eucalypts And firs still green with dark and purple cones. He measured out the oceans and decree

All the World Was Broken: An Ecopoem On weightless air, the cocksure ravens flew. Wild sheep chewed grass; deer And bison chewed too. On a slanted hillside white mountain goats Enjoyed a lofty view. In forests, eucalypti, fresh-minted, grew. And fire-green firs with purple cones, Did too. For the silver-studded starfish there were oceans Wet with green and blue – And oceans for the whale and dolphin too. On blackest soil, the man called Adam grew His

The Cosmic Covenant And it came to me all in a feeling how everything fitted together, this place and ourselves and the animals and the tools, and how the sky held us. – Wendell Berry, A World Lost The cosmic covenant — what Isaiah calls the covenant of peace — is, in Robert Murray’s terms, “the belief in a divinely willed order harmoniously linking heaven and earth.” Murray casts this covenant as a kind of marriage: a union binding heaven and earth, God and Israel, into a si

The Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline Project And again: the thud of executions echoes in the green ear of Maboula, Cameroon. The tremendous squeak of the assassin's blow and the axe cleaves the trunk: the first bite travels down the core like electricity through bone. The wood rings out dull music, a drowsy monotone. A loud creak and the sky topples; a tearing tumult of raindrops, leaves and twigs. Upper kingdoms are disturbed: birds disperse and disappear with the passing clou