Of The Empire, Mary Oliver - Poem

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

We will be known as a culture that feared death

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.