Mankind Poem by Tony Jolley

Though I accept that our planet’s fruits are finite and failing,
The rate of population growth rapidly rising,
And that somewhere along a line I’ll probably not live to see
This is doubtless going to force mankind
To do very much more with very much less than it would like it to be,
I reckon our problem’s got more to do with distribution
Than overall resource diminution:
It’s always those with next-to-nothing
Who end up with nothing next.

Whilst we are arguing how to ‘draw in our horns a bit’,
Cut back, cut down and ‘live within our means’,
‘They’…
[Meaning anyone that is not ‘we’, ie:
Anyone out of sight,
Out of mind and
Outside our ‘I’m Alright Jack’ island mentalities],
This ‘They’,
This growing majority,
Lack not only the means to live,
But the meanest of means to survive.

I don’t see this getting any better – do you?

With ‘Globalisation’ and ‘Global Warming’ on the world’s agenda,
Our ‘First World’ will be watching with one eye
Its money literally evaporate ‘into thin air’ -
[Going up, but for once, not ‘in smoke’]
In hope of slowing the rate CO2 makes it thicker;
Whilst the other will weep bitter tears at the sight of jobs hemorrhaging Eastwards
As our own industrialists move technology and investment
To sources of lower & lowest cost labour in China and India
In search of higher margins, profit performance and better yield management.

If that all adds up (or rather subtracts) to stagnation,
What then becomes of the ‘First World’ nation? ….
More insularity, I guess, and ‘starts at home’ charity.


The ‘Second World’, I might venture to suppose,
Will be frantically focused upon its own, long-overdue, industrial revolution,
Relishing the realisation of its potential,
Consumed by its own myopically kinetic energy
And it’s world-beating, and above all, West-beating, opportunity.

Most of the models and projections I’ve seen appear to predict
That the ‘Third World’ will be hardest hit
By the dramatic, sadistic indifference of climate change
Which won’t lose sleep at kicking the world’s weakest and poorest full in the teeth.

Prophet I am not,
But sadly I foresee
Whole nations,
Entire ‘Third World’ populations,
As refugees,
Walking for Water,
Fighting for the Right to Food.
Darfurs will become a common occurrence:
Ever at our doorstep,
Ever on our conscience.

Are we who have only just less than everything
Prepared to share with those who have all but nothing
The benefits the accident of our birth came bringing?

We don’t do it now if we’re honest,
And if I’m right about the way we’re headed
[And I hope to hell I’m not …],
I can’t see us delving any deeper into our pockets – probably the opposite.

If we don’t, or won’t then I for one am resigned:
We should change our name for shame we’re not ManKind.