How Eden weeps to see,
the ache of every tortured tree.
How Eden doth recoil,
at bitter cancer of the soil.
Man was placed as king of beasts,
his palace carved of nature’s stone,
and every corner of his house,
he builds a city, builds a throne.
And every marble floor is made,
to subjugate the simple rock,
and every mountain gouged is paid
with poisoned water, poisoned stock.
And every road and robot-lord
is fed its fire, ever rushed,
and we must witness the accord
of gentle nature gently crushed.
How Eden weeps to see,
the ache of every tortured tree.
How Eden doth recoil,
at bitter cancer of the soil.
Mark Sheeky is a contemporary renaissance artist from Cheshire, United Kingdom; a surrealist oil painter, music composer, piano player, poet, and more. His childhood passion was computer game design and programming, composing music on software of his own design and founding a sound effects library. In 2004 he began oil painting and decided shortly after to devote his life to art.
Excellent poem!
Dear Mark,
“How Eden Weeps,” so achingly expresses your poetic visual images, the sad destruction of the natural beauty of the earth and man—I agree. Well, that’s just what happened after Eve ate that darned apple and gave it to Adam.
However, when I grieve over “man’s smudge,” I counter with my favorite of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ lines: “…for all this nature is never spent. There lives the dearest freshness deep down things…..because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” You must be a kindred spirit to Hopkins.
Carol Ann Herring
Thank you Kathy, and praise indeed with the Manley Hopkins comparison, thank you Carol. I wanted to include the word robot in such an old sounding poem, to bring it up to date a little, perhaps to show that times do not change.
I agree, Mark. Including the robot and other excellent word choices made for a crushing poem.