I'm currently reading Devotions by Mary Oliver, and I wanted to share this poem - I think it's worth reading given the state of the world right now. Her work in this book is almost entirely about nature, and it tends to find the good in the world through nature rather than adressing it's problems head on. This poem is one of the few that confronts those problems directly. It reads like a piece of cold set inside a book of warmth. If you have read this or heard any of her other poems, you will understand what I mean.
This is page 112 - Of The Empire
and adored power, that tired to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politcally, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
