Perspectives in a Dark World

This poem was inspired by Caitlin Matthews where she said recently:

"Rather than giving hatred a draught and fanning its flame, we can instead return to the ever living spirit of the land in which we live and give it honour: the land and its administrators are not the same thing. When we are one with the ancestors and with the land on which we live (which may not be the same land as our ancestors) a different equation can work out. It is down to each of us to make those connections and maintain them, whatever else others are doing. This has always been the way. "

Here my a cosmic look at our world, but also in the scale of things, that what we can do here and now is still important, and can shape our future.

Perspectives in a Dark World

The world will come to an end
In its due time, thus entropy’s trend
Moves towards the dying sun;
Expansion of gases, outwards run,
Consuming Mercury, Venus, Earth:
Odin in Valhalla laughs in mirth,
At this Ragnarok, the end of days;
Fire or ice: for firstly solar blaze,
Then cold, ice will have domain:
Shrunken red dwarf sun will reign;
But sufficient for the day, the evil
That humans do, making upheavals
In weather patterns, climate dance
Proceeding as within a trance
Towards doom; gnawing the land
Deep cut, deep hurt, by greedy hand,
Seeing little worth in the stranger,
Migrant, despised, dog in manger:
Let them eat dust, but dust we are,
Dust of the earth, dust of a star;
To dust we return, in little while,
Futility confounds, and does beguile:
There seems so little we can do,
Makes a difference, makes anew,
This fragile, broken world of ours:
The clock is ticking down the hours;
But this is our art: to do what we can,
Weak, small, feeble, in our own lifespan;
Darwin’s wisdom: so many tiny acts
Can heal the land, mend the cracks;
Repair the fabric where it wears thin,
For ourselves, and all our living kin,
That lives on this planet, in the strife,
That we can bring the light of life;
Open Pandora’s box, let out the hope
For all of us, to aid, to heal, to cope:
Into the darkness, bear a candle flame,
For all so wrong, for all our shame:
And mend the threads, bind together,
Sailing on through stormy weather,
Hoping for glance of promised land,
To make there harbour on its sand;
We will not see it, nor our children,
For this is the evolutionary amen:
Time’s delight: small acts of kindness,
Overcoming humanity’s blindness;
These perspectives in a dark world
Shape the way, our lives unfurled;
Bright the vision: hope not despair,
Still long before the sun’s great flare;
And so we strive, and must not cease:
Time enough for rest, time for peace,
The lion will lie down with the sheep,
The promises made, we will keep.