Sweetness
Digesting other life, against its will,
diversified after the early Cambrian.
The violation probably started
with the tentacles of basal jellyfish.
Poisons permeated, points tore into flesh,
antler-picks prised ore, we learned to burn
and now the drill-string grinds
through sedimented time, releasing
the heat of Carboniferous afternoons
into our combustible Cockaigne. We can’t
unlearn the comfort we derive
from warmth (or coolness), the thrill of speed,
the east of traction powering the plough,
for we imagined it before in fairy fantasies and gardens
for the righteous. Ease and magic carpets:
ignoring the starving at the gate, zones of sacrifice,
the material reality of climate and terrain,
birth and death, violence and justice.
Like the tentacles of Cambrian jellyfish,
imagined power entangles us,
rendering life to stone once more.
You still we call this sweetness.
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2022. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2022 was Ifor ap Glyn.
Editor’s note:
In just 22 lines, this poem takes us from 500 million years ago, when lifeforms left the sea, on a whirlwind ride through human exploitation of the planet, ‘releasing the heat of Carboniferous afternoons into our combustible Cockaigne.’ It posits our legacy to the future as a fossilised mass extinction.
Blinded by the sweetness of our short time here, we ignore ‘the starving at the gate’ – and also our duty to future generations, the duty of being responsible ancestors. ‘Imagined power entangles us’ – a sobering poem of epic scope.
Author’s note:
‘Sweetness’ is one of a number of poems in the Pibroch collection which attempt to take a long view of the current climate emergency, tracing its origins through time to the acute pinch of this moment.
The great biophysical engine of the atmosphere, hydrosphere & biosphere is driven by those life forms that derive their nourishment directly from inorganic molecules. It is in the early Cambrian that creatures appear who free-ride on the effort of others in various predatory & extractive forms.
Feeling my way through the science and the poem, I came to sense our current addiction to free-riding, exploiting the effort of other creatures to insulate ourselves from reality, is a fatal trap in which we have entangled ourselves and our children: numbness mistaken for sweetness. As apex predator we can only prey upon ourselves.
