Timothy Adès
It is not easy to survive nowadays
- title of a poem by Xu Zhimo
Ecopoem for Xu Zhimo Festival 2021
There's Plenty Left To Do...
First, flee from fossil fuels. – Cut coal,
calamitous carbon-cooker, catastrophic.
Go green: gladden Gaia. Grudge gas.
Seek SUN: see society sunlit, sun-soaked,
sun-sated. Send solar supply skyrocketing,
A REAL RENEWAL OF FUEL !
Avoid airports and aeroplanes. Curb cars,
take trains, be beautiful by bicycling.
Stop stravaiging, stampeding. STAY STILL.
Work with winds, wake with windmills,
win water-wealth where wild waves wallow:
tap the tideways, tame Tethys. Turn the tide!
Reform rethink repair replace reduce retrench,
REFUTE ; REFLECT ; RESPECT.
Proclaim peace, piety, penitence,
Philadelphia – Penn’s Pennsylvania principle,
Brotherly Love. BUILD BROTHERHOOD!
Halt hostilities, drop disputes, forge friendships,
Teach techniques, exchange expertise, talk to
translators, prepare poets, persuade politicians.
Proscribe pandemics, prescribe panaceas.
Install insulation insistently, invest in it,
it’s inexpensive, intelligent. Imitate igloos!
Whisk wealth wherever wealth’s wanted, whoosh
water wherever, whenever, without waging war.
Beef-binges burn Brazil. Eschew energy-expensive
excesses exhausting Earth’s ecumenical ecology.
Eat, eke, eclectically: stuff sensibly, sustainably.
CRISIS! CHANGE COURSE!
CAMBRIDGE * CHINA * CHANGE
Change Asia Americas Africa Australia
Europe Everywhere
CHANGE NOW