Poem
Let me end this newsletter with a long poem (probably the longest I’ve ever written) I recently finished. It’s quite an experimental poem for me, attempting to summarise the whole history of the human race, our present predicament and
our potential future. In a sense, it is a poetic version of my book The Fall. Let me know what you think!
The Virus
1
I Everything was peaceful on Earth.
In lush forests, human beings lived simply
taking nothing
more than they needed from the trees and soil
content to exist in the present
without craving for change, or striving for power
able to sit quietly if there was nothing to be done
with the fresh radiance of the forest flowing through them.
For thousands of years, nothing changed.
The same cycle of seasons, and of birth and death
as the Earth turned and tilted through space.
and the sun shone steadily and quietly.
But then the stillness was broken.
A strange virus infected the human mind.
Who knows where the virus came from?
Perhaps a random genetic mutation
or some aliens who brought it from their planet.
Who knows who it infected first?
Maybe just one person, or a whole community.
But the virus spread
quickly.
Our ancestors had no immunity.
At first exposure, they were overwhelmed.
The symptoms were severe:
a restless discontent, an undercurrent of anxiety
as pathogens spread through their cells;
a sense of unreality, of separation from the world
as illness drained their energy and blurred their senses
enclosing them inside themselves, like birds in a cage.
Suddenly the present was no longer enough.
Suddenly the forest no longer felt like home.
We craved for activity and excitement
to escape our uneasy inner worlds.
We craved for future achievements
to escape the dreary present.
We craved for power and wealth
to try to relieve our sense of lack.
And soon the
world was corrupted
with the sickness of craving and striving
and the madness of war and oppression
and the pain of the Earth, the suffering of other species
as nature became an enemy to abuse and exploit
and we hacked down the forests that nurtured us
and tore at the ground that we grew from.
And the greatest part of the insanity
was that our ancestors never realised they were
ill.
The infection was never diagnosed.
They accepted their madness as sanity.
They saw chaos and cruelty as normal.
They believed their brutality was innate
that they were born to struggle and fight.
2
The progress of the virus seemed inevitable.
How long could such a maladapted species
survive?
And after centuries of frenzied suffering
our demise would surely be a blessing.
The Earth and millions of her species
would surely rejoice in our passing
like an oppressed people at the death of a tyrant.
But then, unexpectedly, a process of healing began.
Some human beings questioned their madness.
Like explorers who discover a new continent, they turned inside
to examine
their minds and observe their thoughts.
Soon they found a space of stillness
beneath their restless thoughts.
Soon they discovered a deep harmony
beneath their surface discontent.
Soon their ego-boundaries softened and dissolved
and they felt freedom, like birds flying out of a cage.
They sensed the peace of the present, the natural ease of being,
and saw that their suffering was not inevitable.
They knew that they were ill, and they could
be cured.
A new wave of empathy swept over the Earth.
Some human beings entered each other’s inner space
looked through each other’s eyes, felt each other’s pain
and understood that they were equal.
They felt the radiance of the forests refreshing them
the rich soil of the Earth nourishing them
and remembered that nature was their mother, not their enemy,
Bright shoots were rising through the darkness.
But chaos still raging. Suffering was still acute.
As some humans found harmony, others grew more destructive
as if they resented the emerging sanity
and opposed it with even more madness.
3
Now the past
reaches the present
and an undetermined future.
Perhaps the healing started too late.
Perhaps the virus has already progressed too far
and already caused us fatal damage.
So the healing will be defeated, like a fresh new stream
swallowed by a dark deep river.
Or even worse, perhaps this isn’t healing at all -
just a burst of
terminal lucidity
a final surge of energy that signals our demise.
Or perhaps the waves of healing will grow stronger
as more of us turn inside, to heal ourselves.
More boundaries will melt, more space will open up
and our deep connection will emerge, like a vast sky behind clouds
and chaos will calm, and suffering will subside.
Then the virus will shrink back
overpowered and conquered
and we will return to health and harmony
and a new era of sanity will being.
The future is undetermined
but we are deciding it now.
All best wishes and blessings
Steve
