Thank you Livia for sharing these poems and for your help and encouragement when I was considering whether to lobby parliament using poems.
Gaia’s Tear
Our Mother Earth is weary of our ways And rapidly declining every day She suffers from our lack of care and love In spite of all her rich and wondrous gifts. She generously gave us gentle breeze, Invigorating briny ocean gusts, Fresh scent of pine woods, blooming meadows, but she’s asphyxiating from our noxious fumes. Her soil is poisoned with our toxic waste That will be fatal for a thousand years. Deserts expand because of stifling heat, Clear streams and rushing rivers, languid lakes, The vast mysterious oceans that were once Alive with fish that darted, leapt in joy, Shellfish, corals, weeds, fantastic creatures Providing food and beauty have become Depositories of our wasteful ways Slowly excluding any forms of life. Gaia has tried to give us early warning Of dangers linked to constant global warming With drought and hurricanes, earthquakes and floods. But blinded by our passion for possessions We do not see, in order to survive Our lives and aims will need dramatic change. She looks at us and sheds a tear of woe To see the desolation we have wreaked The lack of love for creatures large and small, For plants and trees in fields, the hills and vales, For forests wiped out at the speed of fires. Why let one hundred fifty forms of life Be lost for ever every single day? Humble beasts that all feel joy and pain That love their parents and their offspring too, Are killed by man just like his fellow humans. Why don’t we stop this murderous decline That puts our planet’s life at mortal risk? Material greed is at the source of doom That threatens us and all that lives on Earth. Man spreads destruction in his wake, makes wars Produces murder missiles, guns and bombs Instead of ploughshares, wells and homes for all. This pale blue sphere which hurtles on through space By preordained routes since it has come to be Has veered off course far from the plan divine. We can still stop this fatal devastation And save our Mother Earth from certain death, By going back to simple saner lives Closer to Gaia, close to changing seasons, Respecting fellow creatures, flora, beasts, Learning to hear the music of the spheres To see the beauty held in grass and leaves A new age must give rise to a new birth To save our precious desecrated Earth.
The Clock Ticks On
Tick-tack, tick-tack
snow drops still bring
fresh hope of spring
birds build their nest
with frenzied zest
buds still appear
to mask the fear
our Earth is sick
the clock goes tick
when it goes tack
we must turn back
air is acrid
water putrid
our oceans rise
meanwhile time flies
species that grew
from primeval brew
a billion years
are dying out
desert and drought
where once the woods
meadows and brooks
for fish and beast
songbirds and bees
all creatures wild
for man and child
were joy and home
now they are gone
nature cries out
to stop the proud
technocracy
on land and sea
we must defuse
the Earth's abuse
if this goes on
all will be gone
the clock ticks on
tick-tack, tick-tack
‘The Clock Ticks On’ by Livia Varju appeared in Phoenix New Life Poetry in Spring 2007. It was in an exhibition with a painting that Livia did on the subject. The sun was a big clock and there was a pleasant scenery. The time on the clock was 2 minutes before 12:00.