For a coming extinction

Friends!

Been awhile since I have posted. My pre-World Cup USA fever has painfully broken, and I have begun once again to admit thoughts of other things into my mind. I owe you guys a post about the house I am buying, but at the moment I want to share this poem.

This is by William Stanley Merwin, who has just been announced as our next poet laureate. Kinda makes you feel bad about being human.


For A Coming Extinction

Gray whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing

I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day

The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out
Leaving behind it the future
Dead
And ours

When you will not see again
The whale calves trying the light
Consider what you will find in the black garden
And its court
The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
And fore-ordaining as stars
Our sacrifices
Join your work to theirs
Tell him
That it is we who are important