Last poem.
If pressed, I will call this poem an ecological parable.
But I'm not so sure it is an ecological parable, because I
can't figure out what the moral of it
is, if it is indeed an ecological parable.
Maybe it's a parable about always being on a diet.
I'm not sure.
It's called "Feeding the Sun."
There's a sense in which the sun gives us everything
that we have.
It feeds us, if you will.
And I thought, well, what if we had to turn around and feed it?
Pay it back, so to speak, for everything it's given us.
"Feeding the Sun."
"One day we noticed that the sun needs feeding.
Immediately, a crash program begins.
We fill rockets with wheat, smoke rings, razor blades,
then after long aiming--
they're off.
Hulls specially alloyed, so as not
to melt before the stuff gets delivered.
We pour cattle, rivers, windmills, Aborigines,
et cetera into the sun which, however, grows
stubbornly smaller, paler.
Finally, of course, we run out of things to feed the thing,
start shipping ourselves.
By now all the planets, moons, asteroids, and so on have
been shoveled in, though they're not doing much good,
it's still looking pretty weak.
Heck, nothing helps.
Now, the last few of us left lift off.
The trip seems forever but then, touch down.
Just before entering we wonder, will we be enough?
There's a last second doubt in our minds.
Can we-- can this final sacrifice, our it broughten
crumb, satiate it?
Will a glutteral belch burst out then at last.
And will that big burp be seen by far off
telescopes, interpreted as a nova by those other galaxies,
those further stars, which have always seemed even more
starving than ours."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Just one thing, if you don't-- you can have those things,
if you want, but if you don't want them,
please return them to me.
Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]