My lovely creatures, how I wish
things had been easier for you. You came into this world at such a difficult
time. We were in the middle of such a difficult period, trying to survive a
crisis we had created in the planet’s biosphere through our own carelessness
and selfishness, meddling with the germ plasm of hundreds of species for fun
and profit, prodding the next planet over in a careless fashion without really
committing ourselves to doing anything with it, and then you came along, and at
first we didn’t really give you the attention you deserved.
We should have set firm priorities,
put the climate first and you second, since in the latter case we owed it to
you for having brought you into being, an intelligent species, and in the
former case we owed it to both you and to ourselves. Instead we neglected both
and the results are as we see them: the planet is reduced to this sadly
diminished condition, our species is fallen to a fraction of its former
population and survives only in pockets, either as miserable hunter-gatherers
or as tiny enclaves who preserve the ancient technology but won’t for much
longer, trying to share what we know with you, since you are in a better
position to thrive in this world.
You were sweet and joyful creatures
when we first met you. Much as we probably were when our own species was new.
It seemed a shame to have to break into your innocence with knowledge of
ecosystems and energy economies and invasive species, but we had to. We could
see, as you proliferated in the world we could no longer survive in, that you
were well on your way to re-creating the same blunders we had made.
Good luck, young ones. Take good
care of this planet, and the new ones besides. Share Earth’s life with them, as
we had hoped to.
https://poems.com/poem/night-on-the-island/
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