Gray whale <br />Now that we are sinding you to The End <br />That great god <br />Tell him <br />That we who follow you invented forgiveness <br />And forgive nothing <br /> <br />I write as though you could understand <br />And I could say it <br />One must always pretend something <br />Among the dying <br />When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks <br />Empty of you <br />Tell him that we were made <br />On another day <br /> <br />The bewilderment will diminish like an echo <br />Winding along your inner mountains <br />Unheard by us <br />And find its way out <br />Leaving behind it the future <br />Dead <br />And ours <br /> <br />When you will not see again <br />The whale calves trying the light <br />Consider what you will find in the black garden <br />And its court <br />The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas <br />The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless <br />And fore-ordaining as stars <br />Our sacrifices <br />Join your work to theirs <br />Tell him <br />That it is we who are important<br /><br />William Stanley Merwin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/for-a-coming-extinction/
