What Moulds, Breaking Down?

[Mark Watson]

I originally published  the following piece and poem on 20 Dec 2011 on This Low Carbon Life (the Transition Norwich blog) for the topic week of winter and decay:

 

LAST WEEK I MADE this beetroot ink. I meant to take a picture of the actual beetroot which was becoming soft and beginning to decompose from the outside. But I didn't so this is the ink itself, which comes out a light purple-red on paper, as you can see on the label:

 

Now I know this week is a photoblog of winter and decay, but as I was "Cleaning the Downstairs Toilet Window Frame of Mould for the Landlords' Inspection" yesterday, some thoughts I'd had for ages and been unable to express started to cohere. So I hope you don't mind John if this post is a decayed mix of photo and poem! The text above in bold is the working title.

 

What Moulds, Breaking Down

I wipe black mold from the window frame
Oil-painted white,
I think of all the plastics.
How will it biodegrade?
Will it 'bio' degrade?
In the end.

We don't know what the planet has in store.
For us. For these things. For us.
How they will go
In the end.

What microbes, what subtle processes,
What break-ups-and-downs,
What surprise detoxifications,
What decompositions

I don't like to say these things
In our marketed world
In our money-mind-dominated world
In our arbitrary world of no consequence

I don't want to offer space for any more excuses
for the comments:
'that's all right then, the planet will come up with
something
to get rid of us, bye-bye humans
ha-ha
just pass me the deeds to those tar sands
as big as ten countries
and let the show go on, and the lights,
and let the land and the people and the plants
go detoxify themselves!'

we don't know what the planet has in store,
what unwritten and undreamt-of-yet procedures
what creativities,
what subtle and invisible armies,
what moulds, breaking down

even if we did
it would be no excuse.

 

by Mark Watson(@markinflowers)