Terra's Eulogy

They've put you to rest, my darling.
You are free, at last,
From the insufferable agony you were made to bear.
You welcome, now, the oblivion of absolute death
Over the tortures they inflicted upon you.
Though you convulsed and reeled, and made war
In protest against the sadistic monsters,
They outnumbered and overpowered you
And forced your yield to their perverse folly.

You were a lover of beauty and fertility,
They of ugliness and waste.
You reveled in clear, sunlit days and starry nights,
They in dank caves filled with the noxious gasses
And destruction that mark their existence.
You were a giver of life, knowing joy
In the budding of a tree and the blossoming of a flower.
They uprooted and destroyed your beloved children
And, with their unique weapons, cut and marred you fatally.

You hoped to somehow defeat them-
Those so determined to destroy you.
Some claimed loyalty to your cause and, for awhile,
Fought beside you against your foes. You,
Blinded by your optimistic dreams,
Were bewildered and sad when they, one-by-one,
Yielded to and joined forces with
The terrible devils who sought to break you
And make of you their passive whore.

Alas! You've lost your war, my darling.
They subjugated and raped you
And bound you to their whims.
Your writhing and convulsive protests were in vain
As they tortured you with perverse passion.
And it's ironic that their persistence, also, was wasted.
In their crude attempts to subdue and use you, they murdered you.
Now, as with all parasites, with their host decaying beneath them,
they will devour and utilize what remains'
Then they, too, will perish with your corpse.

Is death to be your fate, then, my darling Terra?
Or will you, like the Phoenix,
Rise from your ashes to life renewed?
When your enemies are finally utterly destroyed-
Dead by the contrivances of their own small minds-
Will you be recreated in your former wondrous beauty,
Or perhaps in a more glorious, gentler form than first you were?
Will I, like they, be utterly destroyed and gone forever;
Or will I become one with some Universal Mind
And bear witness to your ultimate triumph?

Al Swilling
senaa@senaa.org