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It was in old Vienna the world ended
In a cemetery, on the outskirts of the city,
A tree-lined avenue, dark winter evening,
Mourners long gone, snow gently falling
A handful of iconic characters, their grandeur fading,
Drift away and disperse, not stopping;
The lone woman, looking ahead, walking into history
The writer, cigarette in hand,
Leaning back against the rickety cart,
Frozen in time, reflecting, contemplating
On fates and destinies, singular and universal,
The founding of a new world order
Greeted by the lament of the zither.
The homo-sapien and his greed
The primate interloper and his rapacious need
The hubris and the arrogance;
Eden has been ravaged
Razed and stripped bare side to side
From corner to corner,
Till there is nothing left of her to yield.
Still it goes on, unchecked and unhindered,
The annihilation of earth’s primeval resources
Natural, spectacular, timeless and wondrous.
Lessons haven’t been learnt
The hour of reckoning is near.
Nature is striking back
Its tentacles stronger, reaching far and further
Sapien was once the wise one
Now he is blind, stripped of his sheen,
His place in the overarching cosmic design,
The purity of his soul, long forsaken.
He is gifted, the self-styled chosen one
But he is not the only one,
Misguided into thinking he is numero uno
He is a mere cog in the vast biodiverse ecosystem.
Others were here first, many will live longer,
All of them have a purpose and function
Beyond to create, build and propagate;
It is to preserve and protect
The symbiotic equilibrium.
Animals, insects, birds of various sizes,
Fish, fauna, mammals and hybrids
Some diminishing in numbers, others nearly extinct
Oceans, mountains and rocks, vegetation on the plains;
Glaciers; the forever stretching continents of ice
The sea coasts and the marvels below them;
The shy creatures and the obscure tribes,
The nomads in our planet’s remote corners;
All clinging heroically to desperate, tenuous lives.
Nature has awoken and won’t stop;
The cause and consequences have been laid bare.
Heed the warning, the supposed worldly seer and sage
You are the one, but not the only one.
The battle lines have been drawn.
Cease forthwith or suffer,
From the fury of a force even greater,
On a scale not seen before.
Nothing is left for the sapien to deflower,
Not anymore ... |
