Prophets for Profits: Poem recalls 1970

To mark 40 years of Earth Day at Eco U, in spring 2009, poet Paul Belanger composed the poem “Prophets for Profits: Borrowing Sunshine.” He says the piece hearkens back to the exuberance of Green Bay’s first Earth Day celebration, Dr. M. King Hubbert’s prediction of an oil-driven crisis, and the environmental spirit of the times. His poem was commissioned by a fellow UW-Green Bay alumnus long involved in promoting the University’s environmental mission. Belanger is a 2003 grad who holds a master’s in creative writing from Cardiff University in Wales and is currently based at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Prophets for Profits: Borrowing Sunshine

Dawn comes with
the intonation of
Sanskrit and Genesis
over Lake Mendota,
a thousand apologies
for transgressions
against a landscape
of podunks and
metropolises where
everyone confesses
to a cancer tale:
receding woodland,
poisoned river,
asphyxiated sky.

And for Earth Day
velvet rainbows pour
over Madison steps,
Milwaukee nominates
the toad as its talisman
and Green Bay sweeps
along its highways.

The compassionate minds
and calculating hearts
of UW – Eco U echo
from the Brooklyn Bridge
to San Francisco on the hill,
where ripples tidal wave
and collide in the resounding
climax of a desperate love
for a once beloved earth.

In celebration we rise
as spontaneous as grass
shoving aside sidewalks
for sunlight, and fill parks
with our renewal songs.

Blazoned halo, fiery
bird above the water,
it is warm for April,
and faces balance
brightness and anxiety,
the responsibility of
of a child’s tomorrow.

From campuses to campaigns,
lessons of conservationism,
environmentalism resonate
as poems waxed satirical
prognosticate Peak Theory
and Population Bombs.

So come dwindling dusk
the tone is solemn and
three thousand drowsy
nod along to Dr. Hubbert’s
apocalyptic prophesy
for an optimistic century.

Lights flicker and shake,
water finds pin-holes,
and winds buffet walls,
but the storm doesn’t
drown out his voice
when it touches down
at the motor lodge,
doesn’t disturb us
already sleeping,

emerging unscathed
and stunned by irony,
more worried by
collateral damage
to our homes than
Hubbert Curves,
a finite resource
raising temperatures,
shifting currents
and weather patterns,
eroding coastlines
and economies.

Perpetually conceited,
smug in celebration,
we leave Earth Day-
prophecies to the nervous,
hurricanes to the poor,
and oil to the privileged,

trade today’s tomorrow,
our brooms and prayers
for borrowed sunshine,
the prophets of science
for the politics of ease
and profits of disbelief.