One Story

From its idealistic beginnings to what is become one of the most celebrated global events of the year, Earth Day is a rare phenomenon of our modern age; a single day where the importance of empire and capital are secondary to the health and preservation of the planet, a day where 193 countries from around the world are united by this most universal bond of existence.
 
Since 1970, we celebrate April 22nd as a day of environmental awareness, advocacy, and appreciation. Recent years have also seen an increased emphasis on political policy reform in the face of impending climate disaster. The 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, for example, saw signatories from around the world coming together in their pledge to ensure a safe and sustainable planet for all.
 
The effects of climate change, like those of a global pandemic, are and will continue to be felt across every corner of the planet. We can be heartened by the universal support for vaccination research, dissemination, and safe social policy that has overtaken society over these past many months, if only to show that we are capable of so much more, that in the face of financial collapse we left no stone unturned in our fight to overcome the coronavirus. This too shall pass, but the work of defending our planet is ever-demanding and will require an equally impassioned effort.
 
As part of our continued Earth Day celebrations, Peace Partners will showcase environmental poetry throughout the month of April. From Nicaragua to Palestine, from Indonesia to the United States, we have carefully selected work that speaks to our universality and the global necessity of climate action. We begin with famed poet and environmentalist W.S. Merwin and his timely appeal, “One Story”:

One Story

​Always somewhere in the story
which up until now we thought
was ours whoever it was
that we were being then
had to wander out into
the green towering forest
reaching to the end of
the world and beyond older
than anything whoever
we were being could remember
and find there that it was
no different from the story 
anywhere in the forest
and never be able to tell
as long as the story was there
whether the fiery voices
now far ahead now under
foot the eyes staring from
their instant that held the story
as one breath the shadows
offering their spread flowers
and the chill that leapt from its own
turn through the hair of the nape
like a light through a forest
 knew the untold story
all along and were waiting
at the right place as the moment
arrived for whoever it was
to be led at last by the wiles
of ignorance through the forest
and come before them face
to face for the first time
recognizing them with
no names and again surviving
seizing something alive
to take home out of the story 
but what came out of the forest
was all part of the story
whatever died on the way
or was named by no longer
recognizable even
what vanished out of the story
finally day after day
was becoming the story
so that when there is no more
story that will be our
story when there is no
forest that will be our forest