What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire Page #2
- Year:
- 2007
- 123 min
- 117 Views
I have walked that path, unaware of my own
blg feet, enacting the stories of our culture,
not stopping long enough to feel
the instability of the slope underfoot.
But in the late 80s, news of the ozone
hole and global warming first hit me,
and the ground began to shake.
I stopped and looked
around me for the first time.
I got scared. I got involved.
And then the shaking subsided.
Or rather, I just got used to it.
Life got more complex with the births of my three
children. And there was climbing still to do.
So I continued to climb.
But the tremors were still there, underfoot.
At night I slept, but fitfully, clenched with worries,
vague rumblings from the future.
In my dreams, I would stand at the
pinnacle of the present, and look
out over the surrounding terrain.
And it didn't look like I had thought it would. . .
A faint howling in the distance pierces the night
The monsters we have created
Lumbering to rampant life
Are heading even now toward our village
Nuclear weapons
Building their time
Itching with purposes unfulfilled
As hopeful fingers tremble near buttons
Bunker Busters and Tactical nukes
Suitcase bombs and terrorist acts
Power plant accidents and leaking wastes
Plutonium launched into space
And depleted uranium poisoning the battlefield
Depopulating the land
Chemical warheads
And biological black magicks
Sarin and Soman and VX and phosgene
Anthrax and smallpox and plague
Enough to take out entire cities
Enough to cover the planet
And they don't care who lets them out
As long as they get to play
Others nasties lurch toward us on their own
Old friends, new creations and recent escapees
Ebola, Marburg, Lassa and SARS
Swine Flu, Bird Flu, HIV and AIDS
The rebound of tuberculosis,
Cholera, malaria, and typhus
Prions and mad cows
Scrapie sheep and chronic wasting disease
Cancers that eat away our lungs our brains
Our breasts our testlcles and our ovaries
And new monsters peer over the horizon
Good intentions spliced to
Blind arrogance and numbing greed
Frankenfoods and Terminator seeds
Herbicide tolerant and pesticide laced crops
Patented Life
Barely tested, quietly ticking. . .
Let loose upon the land
As if their creators, having looked at the world,
Managed to learn nothing at all
The monsters howls grow frenzied
Chemicals in our land our sky our rain
Our rivers our food our bodies our babies
Rising male infertility rates and
Superfund sites and ozone depletion
Rivers dammed and salmon doomed
Topsoil loss and fertilizer run-off
Huge oceanic dead zones
And depleted fisheries
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"What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 24 Apr. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/what_a_way_to_go:_life_at_the_end_of_empire_23260>.
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