FORECAST
Time is running out, Man,
Noah said,
when he built his Ark.
It is an assumption that life
hung on a thread then -
but time kept running.
Time is running out, Man,
Saint John said
in the book of Revelation.
For millenniums other prophets
proclaimed
the images of Armageddon,
have warned of earthquakes,
floods,
disease,
falling of stars,
fire and brimstone
on last judgement’s day.
Heralds of the desert still call
for penance, and yet
time keeps running.
It seems, the threat is merely
a game, a fairy tale
in a holy script.
But while I recent doomsdays forecast,
Life’s resources diminish day by day -
oil-slicks cover Oceans and coasts;
lakes and rivers consume industries’ waste
as smokestack catapult the acid rain,
millions of exhaust pipes enshroud the sun,
pock holes in the atmosphere that upturn
temperatures, raise water levels to floods,
irretrievably strangling this planet
into submission.
At the prime of Man’s achievements, where
nature reveals itself through calculation,
books of science open - and
suddenly old prophecies return
like ghosts of haunted places -
prophecies that always sounded like
fairy tales.
Time is running out, Man . . .
now say computers’ calculations.
Still, I reply: “I’ll believe when I see it.”
Indications are so unexpected - none of
the holy signs as trumpets, lightning, thunder;
they are not pompous, dramatic - no,
these signs are calm, unassuming, scientific:
Pollution creeps in like a thief in the night,
weakening, decomposing the substance
of growth, while capital and wealth
triumphs on and on - hailing
the monument of fortune.
Time is running out, Man . . .
one reads, faintly written like
a watermark, in the book of science:
“Life of mankind fifty more years to go . . .?”
unless the nuclear,
our garbage in space
or natures way of an asteroid will
strike first . . . ?
Or -
may time keep running?
-***- 1980
