“…pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; for nothing now can ever come to any good.” – W.H. AudenBy Kim Rahilly
Why are we, as a species, destroying our paradise, the world we call home? This place came so easily to us that it must it must be our birthright; it must be forever, right? We know now that that is not necessarily so.
So, why do we continue -- knowing this -- to obliterate our forests, our animal species, our insects that make our fruits and flowers bountiful, our rivers, our skies and our oceans? Is it because we have the mistaken belief that they are “ours” alone to destroy? They are not.
They belong to the beasts and the bees as much as to us; to the living things that slither, that fly, that roar and tweet; that bloom, morph, swim and hatch; that flutter, soar, burrow, and run like the wind; that live in hives, colonies, dens and pouches; the things with stripes and humps, and that are colored in pastels.
They actually share the earth with us (not the other way around) since many species have been here a lot longer than we have (did you know that our present-day birds are related to long-extinct dinosaurs?). But we feel that we have the right to push them out the way because “we can reason.” Oh, that’s reasonable: we should destroy their habitats – and ours – because we can imagine it. It is ours to destroy because we can make a rationale as to why we can do it, or more accurately, why we don’t have to stop. It’s ironic because we actually can’t imagine it – if we could, we would stop right now.
Recently, E.O. Wilson, an environmental advocate and author of the non-fiction book, “Creation,” told Bill Moyers on PBS that we are "doomed to live in an artificial world," like a “soylent green” or space-station world. If he’s right, how long would we last in such a plastic environment? Not for very long, I would imagine, and not very contentedly. The idea of it defines the word, "unnatural."
“This is the only planet we're ever going to have," Wilson said, "it has taken tens, hundreds of millions of years to create this beautiful natural environment we have, that has taken care of us so well; that is in fact, our greatest natural heritage -- and we're throwing it away in a matter of a few decades.”
Could our antipathy be caused by the loss we have all endured? Are we destroying the earth out of grief? Have we given up caring due to a deep, collective despair? So many loved ones have departed this place. Think of all the wars that have taken our sons; all the suffering caused by holocausts, hurricanes, fires and tsunamis; diseases and cancers, accidents and acts of terrorism. Is our collective grief so great that we can no longer embrace life? Can we no longer envision a place for us in this world any more?
W.H. Auden could have been writing about our planet when he wrote his poem, “Funeral Blues,” which ends like this:
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
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Here’s the complete poem:
FUNERAL BLUES
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
First published as "Song IX" from 'Twelve Songs" (1936);
Reprinted under the present title in "Tell me the Truth about Love" (1976).
