Poetry: The world we imagined on is disappearing.

[Allan Balliett]

re: globalization from rkm's list:

    Why We Are Here
    (London, 2003 and Seattle)
     -- Robert Arthur Lewis
    Because the world we imagined, the one
    we had always counted on
    is disappearing.
   
    Because the sun has become cancerous
    and the planet is getting hotter.
   
    Because children are starving in the shadows
    of yachts and economic summits.
   
    Because there are already too many planes in the sky.
   
    This is the manufactured world
    you have come here to codify and expedite.
   
    We have come to tell you
    there is something else we want to buy.
   
    What we want, money no longer recognises
    like the vitality of nature, the integrity of work.
   
    We don't want cheaper wood, we want living trees.
   
    We don't want engineered fruit, we want to see and smell the
    food growing in our own neighbourhoods.
   
    We are here because a voice inside us,
    a memory in our blood, tells us
    you are not just a trade body, you are the blind tip
    of a dark wave that has forgotten its source.
   
    We are here to defend and honour
    what is real, natural, human and basic
    against the rising tide of greed.
   
    We are here by the insistence of spirit
    and the authority of nature.
   
    If you doubt for one minute the power of truth
    or the primacy of nature
    try not breathing for that length of time.
   
    Now you know the pressure of our desire.
    We are not here to tinker with your laws.
    We are here to change you from the inside out.
    This is not a political protest.
    It is an uprising of the soul. ~

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