Writer Philip Webb Gregg shares a new poem exploring rewilding as a sideways step into a stranger world, resisting simplifications of ‘progress’ and the gains and losses of our current model, even as we seek to change it.
1,100 words: estimated reading time 4.5 minutes
Re.Wilding
we will eat meat still dressed in fur, feather
and claw. we will give darkness again a place in our bodies. all sickness shall
be cherished, allowed sweat, gland
and pore wherein to thrive. we will run after each other in the dead
of night – blood on our tongues. penicillin shall be
crucified upon the hill
and forgotten.
our men will wander, blind and bludgeoning, opening
debates with bubbling streams and the burnt-out husks of trees, forming
conclusions with starlings, finding
answers, as they always
have, in the spit of their palms.
our children will die, of course, crushed between
their mothers’ thighs. but it won’t matter, because our women
will know at last what it means to be free.
our teeth will rot and hang slack in our jaws. we will neither know
the names of the stars, nor of each other. but we will hold
each other, nonetheless. nameless and gasping. we will discover again
the truth of words that have no place in our hot
human skins. and with these words we will say, as we die: this is how
it should be. this death
was given by the wind. life shall feast on ash and
the only love
shall be
the love of dirt and
rain.
the air will be clear and the rivers white as our bones and we will breathe. for the first time, in so long. we will breathe. our hearts will be drumsticks in the hands of painted, matted shamans. long dead languages will suddenly spill from our lips like drool, like regurgitated food. like laughter. the wild stones that hold up the sky will kiss and kiss and kiss until they are bent-over bleeding-mouthed and all of a sudden, the clouds shall crash to the ground, heavier than we ever thought they possibly could be. there will be no patterns any more. only perfect, perfect humanity
and disappointed chaos.
And the beast which I saw.Artist: Luisa-Maria MacCormack © 2020 www.luisamariam.com
Rewilding — neither forward nor backward
This poem started as all good poems do — in a state of agony. I was lying prone in a chair, mouth gaping wide, feeling infinitely fragile as I stared up into the eyes of my torturer cum-saviour who operated without remorse amid my pitiful moans. That’s right, I was at the dentist.
And it struck me, as I walked out with a numb jaw and much lighter wallet, unable to speak or barely think past the painkillers, that humanity had never had it so goddamn good.
All my life I’ve believed, no, I have known, that this society (by which I mean Western, capitalist society) is a lie. A con. A dream of progress, behind which sits the ugly nightmare of perdition. I know this because of my childhood. My mother who is an activist. My father who was a poet. The community I grew up among, and all those I’ve met along the way have only served to intensify my distrust of the current system and the certainty that it must, and shall, change.
Not that you need a hippy childhood to come to this conclusion. The truth of it can be seen by looking out the window, reading a thermometer, or simply watching the waves rise. But maybe it is also true that I have too often overlooked the benefits of progress.
How many lives have been saved by science? How many children born? How much pain averted? And shouldn’t we be grateful for all that we’ve been given? Yes, of course we should. But we should also acknowledge all that we’ve lost. The secret ways. The hidden ways that too easily kindled and charred when the light of logic shone into the wallowing shadows of faith. The idea of ‘not-knowing’ is not a bad thing. In fact, there is salvation there, in the humility and the hugeness of the world.
The idea of rewilding is not to progress by going backwards, but instead to take a step sideways, into a greener, stranger sense of ourselves and the world. This poem is a satire on everything we have gained and everything we have lost. It is an invitation to take that step, neither forward nor backward, but just a little bit slantways.
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We are grateful to artist, and tutor of art history and drawing, Luisa-Maria MacCormack for the image which accompanies Philip’s poem. It comes from her series ‘And the Beast which I Saw’.
As well as Philip’s previous posts for ClimateCultures, you can also read his contribution to our Quarantine Connection series: his story, What We Find in the Guts of the Bodies that the River Gives Us, appeared on Day 2 of this special 40-day series of new and archive material from ClimateCultures members during Covid-19 lockdown.
In his essay for the Dark Mountain Project, Where the Wild Things Aren’t, Philip reflects on his experiences living in London after a childhood in rural Spain: “If we allow ourselves, we may begin to notice that nature is everywhere, just as it always has been. And it is possible to feel like a part of a wider world, even here. There are birds perched on blackened chimneys and squirrels running across abandoned railways. There is a wound of green cutting across the grey pavement. There are trees which explode with life in spring and then wilt into sleep in autumn. The breeze is still cool in summer. In winter, the cold takes no notice. The rain doesn’t care. And that, to me, is at the core of what the wider world stands for. The lesson we can take home, into ourselves, is that nature is the essence of beautiful indifference. Like gravity. Like the sun. Like the earthquake or the wildfire or the drought. These things are neither cruel nor loving, they merely are. And seeing them, sensing them, should remind us that we are no different. Though we build structures between us and the real world. Though we divide and separate and rift. We should remember that we have the outside within us, regardless of cities or walls. We ourselves are liminal, able to inhabit both worlds at once.”
Fellow ClimateCultures member James Murray-White is a member of XR Rewilding, which explores and advances rewilding — of the land, of the human — within the context of Extinction Rebellion. You can see a short description and video from James at Campfire Convention, and there is a public XR Rewilding group on Facebook.
Philip Webb Gregg