Answering Back #13

Empathy will save us

The Beasts

(written in 1855, from Leaves of Grass)

by Walt Whitman

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I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd;

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition;

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;

Not one is dissatisfied—not one is demented with the mania of owning things;

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;

Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

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A poem should contain some happiness

by David Dayson

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God knows there is enough horror in this world, 
just when you seem to be coping 
with one tragedy, there’s another not far behind.

Although, I’m convinced empathy will save us, 
not for one another, that seems to have
gone out the window a long time ago,
but empathy for the natural world.

This poem should contain some happiness.

I’ll tell you, while writing this I’ve been happy,
because happiness happens when you flourish, 
by developing and expressing your abilities 
through activities you find meaningful and worthwhile.

So, today, in midsummer, I am happy, 
as there is nothing more important to say  
than empathy for the natural world will save us.

I leave unhappiness to those who deny this truth.

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When I despair of humanity

by David Dayson

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When I accept I do not have sufficient breath to atone.
I go for the slow-fix, the green-fix of the New Forest.

In Anderwood enclosure, in midsummer,
fronds of ferns have completely unravelled.

There’s a fecund smell of rot and fungus;
the slow recycle of the forest floor.

Ponies, half asleep, are unperturbed.

There is nothing but silence,
but it is nothing but:

it’s amplified by distant birdsong, 
and the nearby hum of insects.

I walk into this ancient space, 
enclosed by beech trees, like cathedral columns,
and allow myself to be consumed by awe. 

Though some are bored by beetles and are host to bracket fungi; a presage of their collapse.

What is here is as solid as it it temporary;
here for ever, and not at all. 

‘This too shall pass’, an old Persian adage, 
made manifest: 

I am consoled, both trees and tyrants fall. 

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