Where are
my forests and meadows, vanishing fast?
Who is
it that plugs my veins and floods my valleys?
Who carves
open my mesas to extract the breathing stones,
poisonous to the touch?
Who strips
my plains, strips my forests, sucks life out of my soil
and still forces it to produce?
Who eats
my rain forests, diminishing the richness of my personality?
Who dumps
his nonbiodegradable garbage into my oceans
and pumps his acrid fumes into my air?
Who strangled
me with fists of desire and portioned out my corpse
among his friends?
Who will
not be sated so long as there is something left to feed upon?
So long as one weed pokes through the cracks in the cement,
so long as one rodent clings to life in one vacant lot,
so long as one lake remains to support life and quench thirst,
so long as there is one insect-
-a grasshopper,
a cockroach,
an ant-
-one grain of rice or oat
from which to gather sustenance.
He is the follower of Shiva who will devour the universe.
Passively I give it all,
like my children the buffalo,
until there is nothing left.
I have no more to give
I have no more to give
I have no more
I no more
no more
No more.