Thirteen Ways of Looking at Earth
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Earth
and Two Ways of Looking at a Tree
(in homage to Wallace Stevens)
I
For 25 trillion miles
The only hospitable planet
Was the eye of blue floating in darkness.
II
We were of countless minds,
Like a forest
Growing on a nourishing planet.
III
The living planet whirled in the solar winds.
It was an essential part of the cosmic dance.
IV
A lover and their beloved
Are one.
A lover and their beloved and Earth
Are one.
V
We don’t know which to prefer:
The slickness of delusions
Or the wild beauty of realities,
Earth as stage and resource pool
Or as home, as sacred.
VI
Factories filled the oceans and lakes
With savage poison.
The shadow of the Moon
Passed over our home.
The interwovenness
Alive in the darkness
Remained an inconceivable cause.
VII
O anemic men of Wall Street,
Why do you imagine only profit and power?
Don’t you see
How Earth supports the feet
Of the perfect beings around you?
VIII
I know the noble teachings
And lucid, inconceivable mind;
But I know, too,
That Earth is interwoven
In what I know.
IX
When Earth faded from our vision,
It marked the edge
Of our manifold ignorance.
X
At the sight of Earth
Abiding in vast openness
Black and cold,
Even the commanders of capital
Would sob.
XI
They rode roughshod over the land
In steel and glass coffins.
Fear and craving took control,
And so they mistook
The shadow of their psyche
For Earth.
XII
The river dried up.
Earth must be crying.
XIII
Everyone asleep all their life—
They were dying
And they were going to die.
Earth swam
In the cosmic sea.
1)
We could look upon the tree
As a prop to hold our words and wires,
A pile of money with no language
Of its own, without grandmothers,
Without friends, without wisdom,
Without names or functions
Other than what we assign.
This makes a certain kind of world.
2)
We could look upon a tree
As an axis that holds up the world,
Abundant with songs and teachings,
Full of purpose, radiant
With sacredness—appearing at once
In landscape and psyche,
Member of the colossal tribe
Of standing people, still people,
With whom we speak
In reverent tones.
This makes a very different world.