thursday, april 5
i think the special tragedy of
humans, in the long term,
might not so much be
that we die — that we
share with all things, after all
but rather that we destroy so
much with all the considerable
powers granted by
our long biological heritage —
and among those powers
is just sufficient perception
to know ourselves as destroyers
an algal bloom, an asteroid, an exploding sun
— all these destroy, i assume,
without reflection, without memory
but we are something else:
we are capable of apprehending that
we are machines for murdering the world
we bend all our faculties
to slaughter, to obliteration,
to consumption beyond any
reasonable need — and among
those faculties is the
ability to realize, at intervals
that this is true
to love what our aggregate
undertaking is always and
inescapably to ruin:
the animals, the land,
the air and water
our very selves
all of us
we're a fire burning
and damned to know ourselves
as flames.