Leona's comments on Gaia's Children Speak

Gaia's Children Speak  was a revision of a poem which was published in the Green Issue of Poetry Review several years ago. I wanted to bring it into a sequence of poems I'm working on about the nature of belief, but it needed to be re-focussed (from the anti-nuclear, anti-war, anti-genicide, anti-pollution sentiments of the earlier version) to the narrator-spokesperson's belief system and cognitive dissonance.

About four month's after the workshop discussion of my poem, I revised it again, taking into account comments that were made, and without going back to the original version. Once again, I changed the title of the poem. This is important in the new context, as I would not want the reader to concentrate too much on the idea that the earth, personified as Gaia, is a deity the narrator either does or does not believe in. So here is the new version:

Her full-grown children testify
Since the shadow of death was etched upon a wall,
to stand witness as long as the wall stands, we have
learned how to keep this crematorium garden.
Our grass is green, our paths are clean, our roses seem
to flourish; so no one misses innocence, not
one of us mourns for Eden. We have made ourselves
at home in the place of destruction, in the face
of irreparable rents in the fabric, we find
we busy ourselves with small making and mending,
as often despoiling, and soiling earth's garment
here and there, always thinking: it will clean, Mother
will forgive us once again, once again. She turns,
oblivious in her great sleep, pain ingrained in
her harvests and parturitions, awaiting flames.

And here is the earlier version, which was published in Poetry Review , Spring 1990 (Volume 80 Number 1):

Gaia
Since the shadow of death was etched
upon a wall, to stand as long as the wall
stands, we have walked in a crematorium
garden, The grass is green, the roses
seem to flourish; no one misses innocence,
no one mourns for Eden. We have made
ourselves at home in the place of destruction.
In the face of irreparable rents in the fabric
we busy ourselves with small making and mending,
soiling earth's garment here and there, thinking:
'it will clean, Mother will forgive us once
again, once again'. She turns, oblivious
in her great sleep, pain ingrained in her
harvests and parturitions, awaiting flames.