What’s wrong with The System?
It’s systemically flawed.
The soil is starving,
The water’s un-stored.
The rivers weep
And then run dry,
The glaciers gasp,
The mountains sigh.
With a single problem,
We could probably cope,
But The System’s strung up
By its neck with a rope.
Do you fit The System?
Does The System fit you?
Have you carefully planned
All the work that you’ll do?
If you’re not on the edge
You’re just wasting space,
Your yield is a product of
Timing and place.
Do you pollute or contribute,
What needs do you fill?
Are you the water that’s
Gushing downhill?
Are you Jesus or Gaia?
Are you Buddha or Fred?
Are your oceans all healthy or
Is your Sea Dead?
Are you Greening the Desert,
Or burning the sky?
Are you bleaching the coral,
Or questioning “Why?”
What’s wrong with The System?
It’s systemically flawed.
The Earth lies screaming and
Rest assured
An evil genius
Could not devise
A System so reckless,
Open your eyes.
It’s all a forced function
Like pulling a plough,
You try to relate
But you don’t know how.
The taboos and the myths
From that old tribal throng
Don’t mean a thing
If you don’t know the song.
Can we relearn
Those lessons of old,
The dances and patterns and
The stories they told?
Are we just overrun
Depleted and dry?
Do we sit, stand and argue.
Complain and cry?
Do we just do nothing,
Submit to our fears?
Or build swales on our faces
To catch all the tears?
Let’s create something stable,
With function and form,
A new system designed
To weather the storm.
Let’s get back
To the birds and the bees,
Let’s cut down The System
Instead of the trees.
The poem is Copyrighted to Nathan Davies. 2015
Thank you to Nathan Davies for giving Permaculture News the permission to publish this poem.
