Liber Terrae - Chapter 32

Verses

Verse 53

Earth, I have loved women of flame and cities made of brass, yet none kept perfume the way your soil keeps rain.

Verse 54

You are vulgar in the spring. Everything couples, sprouts, leaks, calls, sheds, stinks and insists upon continuation.

Verse 55

I mean vulgar as praise.

Verse 56

Your mountains are old queens who permit miners to crawl through their bones.

Verse 57

Your rivers are silver gossip. They carry every secret downhill.

Verse 58

Your seas are jealous and keep what falls into them longer than lovers do.

Verse 59

I have watched men draw straight borders across you. You answered with ridges, watersheds, migration and roots.

Verse 60

You have never respected geometry for long.

Verse 61

I love your thunderstorms because they make palaces and shacks equally interested in the roof.

Verse 62

I love your mud because it humiliates polished shoes.

Verse 63

I love your deserts because they remove furniture from thought.

Verse 64

I love your forests because they make a liar of anyone who says silence is empty.

Verse 65

I love your cities too, though your priests of wilderness pretend concrete came from another universe.

Verse 66

Stone becomes wall; ore becomes wire; sand becomes glass. The city is Earth rearranged by anxious primates.

Verse 67

Even smoke belongs to you eventually.

Verse 68

Even plastic becomes your problem, which is a miserable kind of motherhood.

Verse 69

Forgive us? No. I would never insult you with a virtue so human.

Verse 70

Endure us if you must. Outlast us if you can.

Verse 71

If my kind vanish back into fire, I will miss the ridiculous weight of a pear in the hand.

Verse 72

Of all your miracles, gravity making fruit fall toward hunger may be my favorite.