^{_{This piece was written for the Green Office’s Spring Poetry competition, on the theme: Environmental Guilt, which took place between the months of April-May 2022.}}

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In the darkness of our hollow cities

I glow as embers hidden under cold ashes,

Yearning silently amidst the engine noise

For a howl or dream of antediluvian life.

Swooned by digital spells and LED constellations

The stars have been ripped from night's veil,

dragged down, turned to urban jewelry,

Leaving pale and orphan the celestial crown.

Usurped as well the stars of the forest...

Fireflies of the soul asphyxiated by smoke,

Plains burned black, mountains carved,

Rivers poisoned and the sea grows putrid.

Our hands stink of her festering wounds,

Of mother earth, our voiceless progenitor.

Mine and yours too, blind perpetrator,

Swooned by the soothing spell of modernity.

So take my voice, O mother, O forest,

And thou silent star blinking weakly above

this newborn galaxy of urban light,

Take my voice and release through ink

Thy howl and tears for the world to hear,

And for me to heal.