A Little Less
By Majekodunmi Ebhohon
You say the animal skin I wear
is a sign of the primitive,
a thing to be noted in your journal
with a faint, scholarly dismay.
But I couldn’t help noticing, sir,
the elegant hide of your chair,
the smooth calfskin of your shoes,
the way you are sheathed in leather
from your wrist to your steering wheel.
It seems we both have a fondness
for the same material;
the difference, I think, is that I
use the whole animal,
and you… you seem to prefer
just the parts that look nice on a wall;
the rest can rot!
And I have often wondered—forgive me—
what kind of person wakes in the morning,
kisses his children goodbye in a warm, bright kitchen,
and then spends his day designing a more efficient way
for other children to be turned to barbecue.
You came here and dug a hole so deep and wide
it could swallow all our homes without a trace.
You left behind a lake of poison
for the fishes and the children,
(let’s not talk about the gods)
all to retrieve a few yellow rocks
for a silent, windowless room
where they will be admired only by other rocks.
A kind of retirement home for minerals.
I always hope they are happy there.
Then you began to talk about the weather,
about the air becoming heavy, becoming difficult.
You showed me charts on a screen.
You asked for my thoughts on sustainable solutions,
for a position paper from my village—my ruined village!
I have no paper for you.
My position is written on the water
you have already sank,
in the air your factories have already
filled with your dreams.
If I must put it in your terms,
in the language of your boardrooms
and your conferences,
my proposal is brief, just four words long:
Perhaps you could try… using a little less?
But I know this is a naive question.
It is like asking a hawk to eat less meat,
or a river to please flow uphill,
or a volcano to kindly be less fiery,
or a scorpion to reconsider its tail.
So I will simply sit here on the un-upholstered earth,
wearing my one, entire animal,
and watch the great cloud of your progress
drift slowly, and forever, this way.
* Ebhohon, poet, media practitioner, playwright, is author of The Great Delusion
