WILL THE DAY EVER COME
BY LANECHKA FEVOLA
Painting By Lanechka Fevola
What have we done, humanity?
Where is the star in the night?
The light is too far now for us to see,
So we travel in the dark in random circles round,
Lost and afraid,
Though the earth still circles the sun and knows its way.
With no star to follow
We, blind and bewildered,
Let the ancient forests die;
And the rivers, the children of the sea, go dry.
We let the wind become a drifting poison over the soil gone dead.
When the birdsong ends, will we not cry?
The sun’s passion is now a raging fire,
And the cool of the night,
A creeping chill.
Still, we trample on and on,
And throw caution to the wind,
The fear unheeded,
As madness reigns,
And division cuts,
And deeper and deeper are the ruts.
The rain falling is not water but bombs
Come from the hovering cloud of nuclear threat.
And that which reddens the sky and earth is not a glorious sunset,
But blood, our blood.
For this is no true heart that beats,
Only the false drum of war,
The ceaseless hammering machines pushing the wheels of greed,
And of more.
Well, those wheels are turning against us.
Instead of our hands in tender care
Being soiled with the good rich earth,
Our souls, hungry and in despair,
Reek with sickness and the smell of death.
Our home in ruins,
We look to flee to abstract space.
And, in hubris, laugh indifferently at the desolation
Made in the name of progress and peace,
Just to find another place
To leave sterile and deceased.
Like we sometimes look with enmity
At those of different religion, colour or race,
We separate ourselves from nature and all her creatures,
And see her as the other,
A commodity to use and to hate,
And not as mother, our mother.
For are we not all members of creation’s family?
No longer are we stewards tending and protecting a garden,
But plunderers and abusers,
Who rape nature’s virgin ground,
To rob from her fecundity,
Those treasures meant to be the sacred gifts of love.
Yet, there are in this labyrinthine darkness
Ruled by the demon that hides its face,
Those wanderers who seek the light,
And know, by the goodness of grace,
That the star is there, somewhere,
Who, in touching the golden thread,
Plant new seeds and heal our souls.
For as strange as it seems,
Within the noise, the madness,
Within the soul’s grief,
Where dwells a silence, a longing, a waiting;
Within the darkness,
There shimmers the song of life
Heard by those with ears to hear,
To lead us home to the joy and harmony we are here for.
Back to our humble origins, our humility,
Back to our humanity,
Where we belong.
In facing the demon,
We sing the song.
Will the day ever come, then,
When we shall all follow the light of that star,
And let it show us the way,
So that the song sings in each and every heart?
Only the star can say.