Progress, Bitter-Sweet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber
Now, can we honestly call the rape of our forests and woodlands…progress?
Humankind needs to balance its own humanitarian needs with the needs of nature to help sustain them. If we are not careful, nature will get the upper hand sooner rather than later, destroy us before we can destroy it or even ourselves.
Whatever, to the victor, the spoils as the march of today’s Titans of big business and entrepreneurial skulduggery proceeds all but unchallenged...
PROGRESS, BITTER-SWEET
Shadows gathering
like crowds for an execution;
storm clouds rumbling
like a malediction on the planet
challenging us to bow out
here and now or put things right
(if it's not already too late)
to bequeath our children a future
in harmony with nature
In a spotlight of sunshine,
luminous corn circles invoking
the mystery of eternity,
human parts all but played out,
hearts put to rout,
hounded by a native savagery
plaguing the purer, simpler,
beauty of a common humanity
haunted by its history
‘Progress’ a bitter-sweet victory
over an earthly vulnerability
Copyright R. N. Taber 2002, 2018
[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in the Poetry Now [Forward Press] anthology series, London and Home Counties (2001) and subsequently in First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]
Now, can we honestly call the rape of our forests and woodlands…progress?
Humankind needs to balance its own humanitarian needs with the needs of nature to help sustain them. If we are not careful, nature will get the upper hand sooner rather than later, destroy us before we can destroy it or even ourselves.
Whatever, to the victor, the spoils as the march of today’s Titans of big business and entrepreneurial skulduggery proceeds all but unchallenged...
PROGRESS, BITTER-SWEET
Shadows gathering
like crowds for an execution;
storm clouds rumbling
like a malediction on the planet
challenging us to bow out
here and now or put things right
(if it's not already too late)
to bequeath our children a future
in harmony with nature
In a spotlight of sunshine,
luminous corn circles invoking
the mystery of eternity,
human parts all but played out,
hearts put to rout,
hounded by a native savagery
plaguing the purer, simpler,
beauty of a common humanity
haunted by its history
‘Progress’ a bitter-sweet victory
over an earthly vulnerability
Copyright R. N. Taber 2002, 2018
[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in the Poetry Now [Forward Press] anthology series, London and Home Counties (2001) and subsequently in First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]
Labels: balance, business, challenge, conservation, development, entrepreneurial, greed, Green issues, human, land, life, methods, motivation, nature, poetry, progress, speculators
posted by R. N. Taber | 10:58
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