CHILDREN OF GAIA as a narrative poem is the summation of forty years of work, mainly in the NHS, with young people and adults failed by their environment in so many ways. The poem ends with an illustration of hope, a photograph entitled “Ithaca,”, copyright the author, John Woods.
Γράφω για να κλέψω τον θάνατο της τελευταίας λέξης
This is why I write; to rob death of the last word. Odysseus Elytis
I.
The Children of Gaia make a virtue of being ill,
We cannot make them well.
The therapeutic regime is failing.
Indeed the treatment is To Fail.
We`ve lost even the remnant of parental control,
Which alright, you would`ve expected
To be challenged by a teenage girl,
Naturally, just like before.
Going out and coming back late,
As if it were a night on the town,
Clubbing, or party, like in the old days;
But something different is going down.
Over a fence, through darkened woods,
To a cold and open hillside,
Wherever they find a space,
To call to the Daughter Moon.
A sharp edged scythe in the sky,
Bright, pale and still, above them,
A million miles from Father Sun,
They are joined in Requiem.
They`ve turned their back on all of us.
We`re reduced to keeping a record.
Watching as they recede.
Now so thin we can hardly see them.
It’s their protest they say, their mission,
A great No to the world as we have made it,
And Yes to an end, to start again clean.
With as little as possible from before.
This may be my last entry in the clinical diary.
Tomorrow the Management closes the clinic.
But I`ll not resign my post. Only when
I cannot get here will I stop checking in.
II.
Like the last remaining Bird of Paradise
I fight against gravity
Striving upwards to find the space,
Believing I can be free.
To flee the triumph of death,
Find time to say what I must,
Despite it’s my last breath.
So this is the plan, when the militia are here,
Hold on to what you fear.
I’ve six rounds left, but will keep two;
The last for me, but not before you.
Kι ομωσ πρεπει να λογαριασουμε κατα που προχορουμε.
And yet we must consider where we are going
George Seferis
III.
Speeding through endless space
Pinning hope on the gleam of a flickering light.
Knowing our old world cannot but get worse,
We stare into the beauty of night.
Because by breathing, eating, drinking, we took,
Leaving nothing for others, because
The good we did became ashes in our hands,
Belonging only in the sands.
Turn to me now as we leave behind,
What we called our ordinary life,
With no idea of what we will find
We might yet defy survival’s knife.
Somewhere out there might again emerge
Love, the man and woman`s relentless urge.
