410 ppm
©April 27th, 2018
By Vijaya Sundaram
What does one say when,
Standing on the mountain peak
Where the air gets thinner,
One’s eyes go dim from no-snow-light,
And there are too many dead
Along the broken icy way?
What does one say when,
From there, one sees the earth
Take shuddering breaths,
Breathing in the very thing that
Once gave rise to life, and
Which now heralds death?
When the shorelines are erased,
And borders are smudged,
And birds fall out of the sky,
And animals keel over, dead,
And the tilt of the axis has moved,
And entire continents of ice
Topple into a fresh-water sea,
And whales and dolphins beach
Themselves, will we be
Forever unforgiven?
We’re all that’s left.
We’ve reached the top.
It’s lonely and bare,
And there is no delight in it.
There is only one place left to go.
And it’s steep, a nether plunge
And we may not be there
To know when we’ve reached it.
What’s left to say?
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Forgive us. We were a mistake.
We will erase ourselves.
We will smudge ourselves
Out of this picture,
And be re-drawn,
Or not.
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