Ecol. Imp. I - Scaring Myself - Poem English
Channel: owais sarvasukhsevaka
Date: 2011-12-14

This is my poem, published on http://owaisvasundhara.blogspot.com/2011/02/poem-ecological-imperative-i.html

The text of the poem is as under...

The Ecological Imperative - I
Scaring Myself


What is the bane 
of the man 
in the current era 
of over-information 
and under-understanding?


I fear: it is 
he himself- 
the breeding man.


And, like all 
sources of error, 
unlikely to recognize himself 
as his own nemesis.


He breeds 
like a rat, unmindful 
of his being the plague 
to the world around 
and to 
himself, as well.


He struts around 
on his little dung-hill 
wishing power 
over ever-larger heaps of refuse, 
he calls 
marketable products; 
feverishly replicating 
his pathetic little self 
over ever-increasing pockmarks 
on the face of this, the 
otherwise beautiful 
Planet Earth.


Consuming 
ever-greater expanses 
of living panoramas 
and replacing them 
with saleable 
and unsaleable 
deserts of death; 
Congratulating himself, mistakenly 
for having conquered Nature, 
a miniscule part of which 
he himself 
actually is.


Funny, 
how it escapes him 
that no part, 
which militates against its whole 
ever survives 
to tell the tale: 
the infected appendix, 
having surgically severed 
and dumped the body 
that once housed it.


Like the rat, 
breeding uncontrollably; 
Unlike the rat, 
living to consume.


Before long, 
what always happens 
will happen: the plague 
that is the breeding man, 
will 
perforce 
out-breed the resources he needs 
and collapse at the altar 
of his exponentially growing wants.


Do solutions exist? 
Of course, they do.  
Does he know them? 
Of course, he does. 
Will he implement them? 
Of course, 
not.


At least, 
not until, he has received 
a real scare.  
And hopefully, 
while he still has 
the wherewithal to correct 
his course, without 
too much pain.  
Avoiding, 
an almost certain 
catastrophic unravelling 
of his ever-more complicated dreams 
of his own, now 
near-non-existent 
future.


Can he still dream? 
Of course, yes.  
Just that, 
the dreams must be simpler, 
more internal.  
More beautiful.


Gandhi's 
of near-sovereign villages.


Buddha's 
of spiritual, 
near-asceticism.


My own, 
perhaps, 
of intentional family; 
near-non-procreative.


The rats, 
pausing momentarily from their race, 
must protest: 
"the race must go on".


What race? 
Why must it go on?


If man can reduce 
other species to extinction; 
how can he find unjust 
restrictions on his own 
consumption, and reproduction, 
especially when adopted 
to save himself 
from extinction.


And unless he wakes up, in this, 
the dark, long midnight 
of his (in)humanity 
and edits his dream; 
his Whole, 
the Almighty Nature, might
unbeknownst to him, 
choose to get the pest 
exterminated.


--

owais vasundhara owaisvasundhara