HYMN TO THE EARTH

Thank you for free will,
a carpet of grass,
green forests, blue seas,
emerald rivers –

Thank you for the rainforest,
laughing monkeys, venomous snakes,
birds of rainbow colours,
cows full of milk and diligent bees –

Thank you for the Word,
letters, coloured paper, love letters,
lost telegrams, children who know how to laugh –

Thank you for life,
memories, clear days, dark nights,
the first kiss and the starry sky,
where the moon stands alone and dreams
are the carpet of a Roman road –

Thank you for the happy time
that flows back into the past,
among ancestors and future generations,
the elusive companion of my soul,
my eyes and body.

Thank you for eternity,
that it is here with me,
with my children, with my love,
that it does not torment or punish me,
does not harness me to a cart of lies
and deceit, breathes with me and comforts me
when I do not know, do not recognise the time
that is slipping away.

Thank you is too little, for it is not a word,
a tear or blood – thank you is freedom,
with which I play every day, a gift.
With just a press of a button,
the image of war, hunger and fear,
children with dead eyes,
mothers with no milk in their breasts,
a dry desert staring into me –

How many times must I still say thank you,
with a plea that our hearts do not break
and our eyes are not filled with blood,
that the blue planet does not turn back into stone.

I fear the times
when they will cast the Earth into the cosmos,

crown her—an aching, weary crone—
with a poisonous wreath
and grind her heart
into falling stars
and invisible black holes.

In the birthing waters of infinity
not even a memory will remain,
much less an image, a stone,
sand, water …

A cosmic emptiness will arise,
without light, without word, without heart.
The blue of the heavens will vanish
into the dust of light‑years.

Yet the clock of time again persists,
slowly moving toward nothingness,
where beginning and end
are the first word, the final image.

Everything will change;
there will be no sky,
much less love or eyes
that could drink the universe.

May the gifts of this present day
be rejected by the body and eye
so full of human greed.

Thus, from the ages of time,
the thread of the world—
of life, of love—
will remain unbroken.