David Johnson

I came across this poem last year on the On Being podcast. Written by the Pakistani climate activist Ayisha Siddiqa¹, it is set against the backdrop of our current environmental crises. I find the poem holds a powerful message of the power of approaching the current crises motivated by love. There is much that has to change and policies that need to be turned around, and with that many reasons to sit in rage, but what is the future that we want and how are we approaching it, how are we building it?

ON ANOTHER PANEL ABOUT CLIMATE, THEY ASK ME TO SELL THE FUTURE AND ALL I’VE GOT IS A LOVE POEM

What if the future is soft and revolution is so kind that there is no end to us in sight.

Whole cities breathe and bad luck is bested by a promise to the leaves.

To withstand your own end is difficult.

The future frolics about, promised to no one, as is her right.

Rage against injustice makes the voice grow harsher yet.

If the future leaves without us, the silence that will follow will be an unspeakable nothing.

What if we convince her to stay?

How rare and beautiful it is that we exist.

What if we stun existence one more time?

When I wake up, get out of bed, my seven year old cousin

with her ruptured belly tags along.

Then follows my grandmother, aunts, my other cousins
and the violent shape of their drinking water.

The earth remembers everything,
our bodies are the color of the earth and we
are nobodies.

Been born from so many apocalypses, what’s one more?

Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire.

But for what it’s worth, I’d do this again.
Gamble on humanity one hundred times over

Commit to life unto life, as the trees fall and take us with them.

I’d follow love into extinction.