For a Coming Extinction

Zen Buddhist W.S. Merwin is our nation’s new poet laureate!  I could not be happier!

The BP oil spill in the Gulf continues.  I could not be sadder.

After watching this video of over 100 dolphins and a sperm whale struggling in the oil (footage begins around minute 6:10),

I felt that this poem of Merwin’s was the right one to share today.

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 foreordaining as stars
Our sacrifices

Join your word to theirs
Tell him
That it is we who are important

- W.S. Merwin, from The Lice (1967)