E-M:/ Time for poetry

["Link, Terry" <link@mail.lib.msu.edu>]

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Enviro-Mich message from "Link, Terry" <link@mail.lib.msu.edu>
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Enviro-Mich is filled with passion and "factoids" but it rarely makes room for the wisdom found in poetry. I stumbled on an old favorite that although written a generation ago in memory of Karen Silkwood, seems all to ripe for the moment we share. If poetry is verboten, I will cease and desist. Off to class...

		BEGINNERS
		 
		 
		But we have only begun
		to love the earth.
		 
		We have only begun
		to imagine the fullness of life.
		 
		How could we tire of hope?
		-so much is in bud.
		 
		How can desire fail?
		-we have only begun
		 
		to imagine justice and mercy,
		only begun to envision
		 
		how it might be
		to love as siblings with beast and flower,
		not as oppressors.
		 
		Surely our river
		cannot already be hastening
		into the sea of nonbeing?
		 
		Surely it cannot
		drag, in the silt,
		all that is innocent?
		 
		Not yet, not yet-
		there is too much broken
		that must be mended,
		 
		too much hurt we have done to each other
		that cannot yet be forgiven.
		 
		We have only begun to know
		the power that is in us if we would join
		our solitudes in the communion of struggle.
		 
		So much is unfolding that must
		complete its gesture,
		 
		so much is in bud.
		 
		 
		.....by Denise Levertov


Terry Link, Director
Office of Campus Sustainability
Michigan State University
106 Olds Hall
East Lansing, MI 48848
1-517-355-1751
www.ecofoot.msu.edu

One planet, one family, one future


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