Written just before Thanksgiving,
about a month after the Cuban Missile Crisis, during a moment of stunned
silence when the world looked at itself and collectively realized: That was close. So there is a sobering
recognition that absolutely, yes, we are truly at war, and also a sense of
relief and thanks that for the moment, cooler heads prevailed. The fingers had
been hovering over the buttons on this one.
The apocalyptic threat of 1961
was of pretty much instant thermonuclear annihilation, and from the Cuban
Missile Crisis we learned that it wasn’t an idle fear. In our day and age, the
line “the land is celebrating men of war” can be changed to “the land is
celebrating men of business.” Corporations aren’t explicitly at war with the
environment, though it might be reasonable to accuse some of being at war with
environmentalists. The environment is two things: Resources first, and when the
exploitation of those resources starts to impinge on economic growth, then
environment as an idea becomes a threat. It is often dealt with accordingly,
through all the tricks and influence that wealth and its cohort, political
capital, can buy. It’s tricky to make blanket statements about corporations, I
realize. Some take their civic responsibilities seriously. But if the Soviet
Union was the great existential threat of 60+ years ago, today it’s the Kochs,
Monsanto, BP, Patriot Coal, palm oil, fracking, TransCanada, on and on, on and
on, who have done such damage that they’re now threatening the biological
fabric of the planet. This is serious. I have half a mind to lay out a list of
environmental conditions that threaten the quality or the very existence of the
biosphere. But I’ve been through that too much, and today it’s not going to
make me happy.
I hope we make it through to some
stunned moment of silence, where we can look back and say, “That was close.”
But this threat is worse, even more sweeping, just not as immediate. The
silence will linger for a long time if we don’t watch it. I don’t want me or anyone to be “incident to
murder.” It’s a good poem, with resonance far beyond its moment, I’m afraid.
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