A Possible Answer Poem by Mary Champion

The poet puts this question to us all -
'How can a brutal, risen ape like man
create so much of beauty while he casts
such misery upon his Mother Earth? '

Surely ‘tis the archetypal battle -
the one twixt Good and Evil - here at fault.
For Evil, read the savage human heart -
made blind by its wild passions to ignore
the needs of any, but its own dark self -
unable to perceive the harm it does
by living only in its present time.
And Good - that is the noble human mind
whose feeble pow'rs of reason can't compete
with petulant demands made by the Heart.

See how the fearsome vigour of the Sun,
now fossilized beneath the planet's crust
is oft found in those regions held in thrall
to despots and to those made fierce by faith -
in Russia, Texas and those backward realms
whose medieval mindsets make life hell
for women and for those who can't conform.
Witness how our own dear land succumbed
to misusing half the world when it had learned
the might of steam made from its native coal.
And then again, when North Sea oil was found
delusions of omnipotence returned
and forged the Iron Lady in their heat.
Scornfully, she set out to sabotage
that compassionate construct of reason -
the Welfare State that we had come to love.
I fear, until our minds can understand
and calm the ancient terrors of the heart,
we're doomed to see our dearest hopes and schemes
forever compromised and come to naught.