Sunday's poem- "That world sold and bought"

I dream by night the horror
That I oppose by day.
The nation in its error
And by its work and play

Destroys its land, pollutes
Its streams, and desecrates
Air and light. From the roots
It dies upwards, our rights

Divinely given, plundered
And sold by purchased power
That dies from the head downward
Marketed hour by hour

That market is a grave
Where goods lie dead that ought
To live and grow and thrive,
The dear world sold and bought

To be destroyed by fire,
Forest and soil and stone.
The conscience put to hire
Rules over flesh and bone

To take the coal to burn
They overturn the world
And all the world has worn
Of grace, of heath. The gnarled

Clenched and forever shut
First of their greed makes small
The great life. Hollowed out,
The soul like the green hill

Yields to the force of dearth.
The crack in the despot's skull
Descends into the earth,
And what was bright turns dull

Wendell Berry from Leavings Poems

Here in Western Australia the conservative Barnett Government is planning to log 372 hectares of forest containing jarrah trees that are over 500 years old. The reason- to produce charcoal. This act of environmental vandalism and destruction will deliver $160,000 to taxpayers.