Song of David

Sir David Attenborough

The other day we watched A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough where the legendary broadcaster and biologist recounts his life and the evolutionary history of life on earth. The opening scene of how Chernobyl looks, almost forty years after the world’s biggest man-made disasters, is a peek into the future, not far from now, on how this planet will look with rapid depletion green cover, rising temperature and melting of ice caps. He also offers viable solutions, if all of us were to start working on it from now, which can slow down the process of the seventh mass extinction on this planet of ours.

We saw the documentary a couple of times and then came the time when we had to book tickets for Delhi. We looked at each other and asked…should we carry masks once again like in those pandemic times; what medicines should we carry and how quickly should we escape from the gas chamber? Chernobyl is coming…or is it already here? That is when I thought of penning a Song for David, on what the near centenarian man dreams of about the only place in the universe where life exists.

Song of David

How I long for a small patch of green

To rest and see the beautiful world around me

As I lay my body on the dewy grass

I can feel the softness of the ground

I can see green grass to my right

And green, green grass to my left

Ants and other little creatures walking around

Doing their daily chores

Quite unaware of my presence

A rabbit peeps out of the burrow

He smiles and asks of me

Come to the magical world below where Alice lived

I said, when my time comes

I shall come beneath the earth

For now, let me admire God’s paradise above

Stay well David, for the earth needs more of you

Said the tiny bunny. 

Now I look up as the orange fire ball

Peeping through the white wooly clouds above

Tick-tock, tick-tock

The world lights up

Warming my body and my soul

Wonder why Van Gogh did not paint

The Shinny Starry Morning?

My eyes love the flapping of the wings

I see a sea of waving wings, big and small

Eagles, parrots, cranes and dove

Singing their songs loud and clear

Singing and dancing in the world’s best blue theatre

It looks like a greatest fusion of philharmonic and ballet

No prizes for guessing the conductor and choreographer of the show

As it unveils before my very eyes. 

My heart feels happy, happy as can be

As I breathe the air so fresh

Filled with the fragrance of the flowers

Flowers blooming big and small

Lilies, sunflowers, petunia and roses

Makes me wonder if Monet lived around here

How else could he have painted his canvases

And filled them with flowers, shrubs and trees

But even he would have tried to match the beauty

The greatest of all painters did

When He created the flowers and filled them with colours

From His pallet that no artist will ever be able to re-create

Colours that change with time and seasons

Shades which will make AI engines buffer forever.

As I turn to my left, I see unending sea

Of bushes, trees and shrubs

Deep from within the forest land

Cries of beasts shrill, loud and roar

Sounds of hooves of the hunters and the hunted

Ending with the deathly shrieks

Tells me of a bustling habitat for animals

Where they roam, hunt and sleep

Dear William Blake

Please don’t take a break

Write beyond the lonely Tyger

Write about the mighty elephant and the tiny red panda

And say again and again

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

My eyes wander to the gushing stream nearby

The changing moods of flowing water

From gentle roll to picking up speed and then falling over the hill

Makes me get up and take a dip

The water is so cold and clean

And as I keep going deeper and deeper

The colourful fishes, big and small

Swooshed past me as if a rainbow passed

They looked happy and spirited

Till the bigger fish arrived

The food cycle in the water must go on

Fishing must also go on, within limits of course

The corals should not lose their pigments

The water must stay ever so clean and limitless

Giving us food, water and life forever

Finally, I put my head up above the water

And my eyes fall on tall snow-covered mountains

Of glaciers flowing by

Penguins, polar bears and snow leopards

Running across the huge chunks of ice.

 

Can anything be more majestic, more serene

And I said to myself

What a wonderful world!

Can we not keep it so wonderful and beautiful?

Can we not make progress and yet rejuvenate the planet?

This planet is not ours to keep

It is for us to keep for our children and their children

We still have time

Not to reverse the climate clock

But to hold it firm where it is now

Never to let it go down any further

All we seek is trees of green

Skies of blue

Mountains of white

Waters so true

So it can remain forever

A Wonderful World.

SS