All the World Was Broken (an ecopoem)

All the World Was Broken

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 food and drink; child  

And woman grew too.  

On a sweet embankment, god-crafted, warm,  

They enjoyed a garden view.  

In meadows, many crops, fresh-planted, grew  

And luscious trees with brightest fruit  

Grew too.  

For our first parents there was work to do,  

To them was given  

A very great task: – To act in place of heaven,  

To preserve all that lives and has its being,  

From the elephant to the smallest flower.  

Because every plant and beast  

From the most to the least,  

Every river and stream  

That sparkled and flowed,  

Had a name – just as Adam had a name.  

And from his work, and by his merit,  

Man might inherit  

In future time  

The power to be as gods and create  

New worlds and devise new names  

Across the universe.  

But all too soon the sun felt shock;  

The moon went pale.  

Man had laid a curse upon the earth  

And run amok  

Like bacteria in a petri dish.  

Forests of fir were festooned with fire.  

And the world’s tallest eucalypt  

Was a pyre.  

Poisoned were the fish  

And gummed with oil the seabird’s eyes.  

Murdered was the seal  

And cut in pieces the whale.  

A monkey languished in a cage  

And the woodland floor was blooded  

With hunters’ quail.  

God’s heart was pained and he was sorry  

He had made Man  

And he said so – through the mouths of prophets  

And in the words of books.  

But Man, being so far fallen and corrupted to the core,  

Had nothing else to do but fall again,  

And fall he did –  

Blundering as he’d done before –  

Too stupid to recall the One who’d spoken;  

Too blind to see the message on the wall;  

Too worldly to construe  

What was written  

In the stars.  

Now all the world was broken  

And mankind had not count the cost –  

He was still mining data  

And dreaming of finding water on Mars.  

And God, having lost  

The world he made, did not bother  

To create another.  

Instead he brooded in the darkness  

Of the deep that was his failure  

And allowed himself to fade  

Away into – what?  

I don’t know – But  

He spoke out his secret name  

And nihil was unloosed  

With an earth-splitting rumble.  

‘Let the sun expire and all matter crumble.’  

And so the stars went out  

One by one.  

Until all light and heat and hope had gone.