Craig Smith
Craig Smith is a poet and novelist from Huddersfield. His poetry has appeared in The North, Blizzard, and The Interpreters’ House, and on iambapoet.com/ and Mechanics' Institute Review. He is the author of the poetry collections L.O.V.E. Love (Smith/Doorstop), A Quick Word With A Rock And Roll Late Starter, (Rue Bella), and the novel Super-8 (Boyd Johnson).
11. The young god recalls what happened to her people
I was not affected
yet I was scared.
And it was new to me
yet I’d been there before.
It triggered memories.
Empires rise. Empires fall.
As it is on earth, so it was with the gods:
even in the heavens, wisdom is rare.
I had been made enemy for declaring
the gods had a duty of care
for the Universe.
I watched my counterparts
strip-mine our civilization
until there was nothing left to breathe.
We were the culture that ate our own land,
poisoned our own water, shat our own bed.
We were pollution and pestilence.
We hurt each other. We hurt our own.
We ignored the emissions that choked us,
the particles trapping the sunlight,
the tides that engulfed us,
the contaminants closing in
like a movie monster.
We spent our invention
on novelty and convenience,
when our future required us to focus
on the threats that beset us.
Our brains were swamped
by the Industries of Greed.
Evil fought dirty, played loose with the truth,
paid useful fools to fight its battles,
destroyed before losing out
or allowing anyone to undermine their profit.
And now I watched a copy-cat disaster:
a sentient life-form inheriting
the perfect balance of oxygen, sun, and water,
the miracle of natural selection,
the lightning that caused the miracle spark,
and spaffing it on the greedy.
The Earth is not a toy the gods replace
when smashed in a fit of temper.
This world cannot be replaced.
This is an apocalypse, not of gods –
they always blame the gods –
but of humanity,
unable to withstand the autocrat’s scam.
But it was a losing battle: <brversus greed by the barrel.
A people beholden to moral-less men
who didn’t care if the planet boiled over
if they profited from the disaster.
The Titans of Hate, the Lobbyists for Ecocide,
the Shills of the Greederati,
the Apologists for Extreme Heat,
for Extreme Humidity,
for Hurricane, Fire, Drought and Flood
and Infinite, Intimate Death
How else to put it
but they are the enemy?
The noise got wilder, the stink stronger,
of a greater poison.
And then,
Silence…
12. The young god finds reason to hope
Let me be clear: I don’t want to be alone.
I passed millennia longing for company,
for some species that resembled humanity
to lift itself from nothingness
to court my attention:
I’m not ready to let it go.
I amused myself with lightshows
and cosmic fireworks,
but they were nothing compared
to the companionship
of the human race.
So many times the thread might have failed
or devolved to protozoa.
So many times the bloodlines floundered
but kept on evolving.
Life proved stronger than any virus or meteorite.
It fought to maintain its momentum
in the face of every contention
and found a way to carry on.
But it came across a scourge
it could not counter,
a war it could not win:
avarice, greed, self-regard, spite,
the gaming of the system to increase
the repositories of the wealthy
without accounting for the cost
to the planet and its people.
I know how nothingness occurs.
I have seen it, my friends, with my own two eyes,
witnessed my confederates lay waste to our lands
while asserting their right to destroy it.
Before my eyes, before my very eyes,
they stripped the cupboard bare
and, with their pockets full,
complained there was no more left to take
as they choked upon their greed’s detritus.
I begged them but was powerless.
And now I was watching it again.
Oh, my good people,
why do we let these madmen have their way?
I hung my head, prepared to revisit
the despondency of my days,
but other voices caught me.
Other visions rolled around the Cosmos.
Voices of honesty and decency,
drowned out, sometimes, by the Preachers of Greed,
yet the message from these young votaries
carried long and deep into the stratosphere.
The story they told – are telling –
is compelling because it embodies the truth,
and is the one thing that can save Humanity.
Friday strikers, taking placards to school
instead of school books;
school ecologists, teaching a generation
that earth’s resources are finite.
Green politicians making ecocide a crime,
though they are patronized, pilloried or mocked;
indigenous people facing down corporate malfeasance,
though their lives are threatened
by the razers of the rainforest.
Scientists scrapping for science beneath a deluge of FUD;
oceanographers, grieving the decimation
of the trenches, reefs and sea-beds,
yet plotting the regrowth of marine life;
rewilders, getting out of nature’s way, letting it breathe.
Seed bankers, preparing
to re-boot nature’s infrastructure
should the worst come to the worst,
and organic farmers, guerrilla gardeners,
allotmenteers with their hands in the soil,
nurturing the pollinators
and ecosystems of the backyard.
Constructors of solar cells, wind turbines,
waterwheels, desalinators,
hydrogen farmers, battery innovators:
conjuring energy and water from innovation
and proofing tools for a saner future.
Investigative reporters unpacking lies
and fleshing out facts though besieged by trolls;
democratic papers, on a budget
but documenting the truth as they see it,
awake to cruelty and injustice,
to the harm done to the planet,
and making the connection
between human rights, democracy,
decency, and a sustainable future.
Their behaviour sustains me.
Nature will return.
The holistics of water falling on the hills,
running through the peat
into the lakes into the rivers into the sea
can still be with us if we act.
Animals will thrive if we adapt.
Catch it early and a viable future awaits.
Maybe not perfect,
not with every creature still intact,
not with every soul dragged free of the maelstrom,
but a future for humans and nature.
Kindness is the yardstick of humanity,
the subtext of every faith
that broadcast its message to the populous,
the teaching to every child
in every sitting room in the world,
every book, every moral fable,
every fairy tale, every classroom.
Every sane system of governance.
Goodness will out
and evil brought to book.
On a lone planet, spinning frantically
against a backdrop of nothingness,
the ones who fight for Life to carry on
are up against it,
but they give me hope.
Craig Smith is a novelist and poet from Huddersfield. He was a winner of Poetry Archive Now WordWise 2022, was cited as a rising star in the 2023 LISP Anthology, and was long-listed for the Brotherton Poetry Prize 2024. He obtained a Masters in Creative Writing from Birkbeck.