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# Ecopoesis
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/creation-2684jsp/
- Published: 2005-07-18T23:07:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-17T11:51:49.000Z
- Author: Gerard Woodward
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:17, #ImagesUploaded

*Now it is time that gods emerge* 
*from things by which we dwell*  
\-- Rilke  
  
1\. *Mirrors*

The sky had nested itself in the rocks,  
The regolith, the frozen poles.  
They had digested its curled-up weather,  
Its soufflé sunsets and Pavlova hurricanes  
Locked in sub-surface cupboards of ice  
Well beyond the nip of our tools.

Being vain men ourselves, our first  
Thoughts were of mirrors, fleets  
Of them hanging in the sky  
To redirect and concentrate the sunshine,  
And when they were built – a vast  
Necklace of reflecting pearls in orbit,  
Made from the scraps of sails,  
Shafts of holy light appeared,  
The sort that might bring simple  
Shepherds to their knees  
But which failed to convert  
A single pebble of that  
Endless beach. After fifty years  
We took the mirrors  
Out of their echelons  
And sewed them together to make  
Just two huge patchwork quilts  
Of silver, each the size of the state  
Of Michigan, focusing all  
Their vicarious light on the poles.

At certain times, if the incline  
Was right, a telescope would reveal  
A planet multiplied by double reflection –  
Trailing off like beads on a string into the curved  
Darkness of space. A good sign, we thought,  
The first step to an infinite universe  
Of habitable worlds.

2\. *The Bombardment*

When the mirrors failed to fill  
With more than a puddle  
The depressions of the minor deserts,  
Our third plan was put into action.  
We found the hypothesised asteroids  
Out beyond the orbit of Saturn  
Wandering lamely like demented  
Children in trouble with their guardians  
And dressed in torn frocks of ice,  
Rich in ammonia, which gave them  
A lemony blush, as though a crop  
Of daffodils had appeared in this  
Little quarter of the infinite.  
We strapped our nuclear rockets  
To their backsides and let them  
Fart across the parsecs until  
They crashed on Mars – thump  
Thump. They sprinkled the arid  
Plains with their valuable, volatile  
Salts and compounds, disturbing  
The sleep of the sky as it lay still.  
The proto-colonies had long since left  
And we witnessed a landscape shift,  
Dusty weather clearing to reveal  
The impacted prospects,  
The new lowlands where ranges  
Had been, and a shock of orange  
Liquid brimming in the remembered  
Courses. The rivers went where rivers  
Had been, redefining the estuaries  
And islands with sharp, golden shores.  
We’d refilled the drained cup  
Of the oceans, a trillion tons of water  
Converged on a bed the size of Connecticut,  
And we cast our nets in a sea of piss.  
So much, we thought, for ecopoesis.

3\. *The Factories*

Having done our violence,  
Within sight of the tear-drop shaped  
River Islands south of the Elysium  
Volcanoes, out beyond the sulphur  
Scablands and the potassium forests  
We built our first factories.  
They sat like any factories  
Though fashioned out of native materials,  
With silica and quartz-encrusted  
Fumaroles they looked like colossal,  
Empty evening gowns  
Standing alone in the desert,  
And had no product,  
Only by-product, the halocarbons  
We longed for, the CFCs,  
The cocktails of halogens,  
Fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine,  
The redeeming pollution. It took  
So much work to produce  
The necessary filth, our complex grew  
To the size of Maryland, trainloads  
Of matter every day, trainloads  
Of refined waste leaving, a work crew  
Of thousands, as if bred for the sole  
Purpose, and yet looking at those  
Sequined chimneys you couldn’t swear  
That anything was happening  
Until one day we noticed how the air  
Began to weigh heavily on us,  
How we each began to feel that we  
Were carrying a small child on our shoulders,  
A little, grey-haired girl called  
Barometric Pressure who told us  
We had at last fastened the atmosphere  
To the planet and that we could go  
Naked for the first time in centuries.

4\. *New Forms of Architecture*

From poor Mars to rich Mars,  
But the only enduring thing we had  
Was our language. We pitched tents  
Of it. We shepherded information,  
Penned and stalled ideas, farmed  
Conversation, planted orchards  
Of discussion which fruited,  
Ripened then fell, spawning  
New lines of thought, of argument.  
And sometimes our talk  
Was a shed of crumpled tin  
And sometimes a limestone  
Cathedral, until by the time  
We had the chance to build  
Something permanent, we felt  
Almost afraid for the demolition  
Of our own history, word by word.  
And this made us shy from the question –  
How should our cities look?

Until then our habitats had been  
Mere attachments, things pegged,  
Clipped, riveted or bolted  
To the surface, memos on a planetary  
Noticeboard, but when we had  
The chance to work with stone,  
To embed ourselves with foundations  
And cellarage, we found ourselves  
Reverting to classical forms, the old  
Orders – columns, pediments,  
Entablatures, scrolled finials,  
Pilasters, though we lacked  
The essential tools and skills  
To make our parthenons anything  
But rough-hewn, wonky  
Approximations of venerable  
Geometries – like Cornish mansions  
Our schemes had all the ambition  
But none of the craft.  
Some of us planned to build  
Venice from an old book,  
As an island city it seemed  
Strangely appropriate, palaces  
Teetering on a brink, but it was enough  
To have the idea only, its execution  
Seemed neither necessary nor possible.

And we sided in the end with those  
Who wanted to shake the habit  
Of being human and take the chance  
To start afresh and let our buildings  
Somehow grow like the green corn  
That had taken so well, that we should  
Farm our houses and let their form  
Be determined by their time and place.  
And so the ancient cities of Earth  
Made their reappearance.  
We still had our bodies, that  
Was the problem. Houses are somatic,  
Born from our dimensions and habits,  
Ur, Nineveh, Babylon, their dumpy  
Ziggurats, trailing plantlife, floods...  
It took our cities to remind us  
We were human.

5\. *We Were Pedestrians*

We called them the Icarus Years  
Because nearly every day  
A boy would fall out of the sky,  
And girls, their parents,  
Uncles, Grand Uncles, whole  
Families, sometimes several  
In one day, sometimes the sky  
Was a weeping mosaic of silver  
Parachutes falling slowly,  
Seriously, the airbags bouncing  
Unpredictably in market squares,  
Scattering geese and goats, landing  
Sometimes in a fountain or fish pond,  
To then hatch with a sound of zips  
And Velcro unfastening (how touching  
Those sounds), and out they’d step,  
Carrying a sack of photos and keepsakes,  
A chair, the odd statue, and always  
A packet of seeds.

It took the average factory worker  
A thousand years to earn enough money  
To emigrate to Mars, so that it was  
Only the rich who fell from the sky.  
Money travels just one way through space.  
Perhaps that accounted for the looks  
Of horror on their faces when they  
Discovered how we lived, as goatherds,  
Burlap-wearing scratchers of livings,  
Bearded, Biblical, folksy. They were shocked  
To find we were pedestrians. Mars  
Was to have been a gateway to an infinite  
Universe of habitable worlds, they  
Told us, and look what you’ve done.  
Where there could have been space ports,  
Universities, bridgeheads to miracles  
Exploiting low gravity and untold  
Mineral wealth, there were chickens,  
Cathedrals on crutches, mucky  
Compounds. They lectured us  
On economics, reminded us  
That the ecopoesis of Mars consumed more  
Of Earth’s energy than was used  
From the founding of the Roman  
Republic to the birth of The Beatles.  
Of course, that was before  
They ’d seen the maize we ’d cultivated  
In green swathes all across  
The Basin of Hellas, or the vineyards  
That thrived on the tongue-shaped  
Lava flows of the Tharsis volcanoes,  
Or the lupin fields that dressed  
With pink and purple skirts  
The giant Olympus Mons.  
They remembered the old pictures,  
The bouldery tracts, courtyards  
Of nothing, Empires of Emptiness.  
They knew they would never  
Want to go back.

6\. *Flora, Fauna, Geography*

It was good to have new geography,  
New shapes on the maps  
To have so much to name  
On the small, local scale of things.  
We soon knew our way round.  
The yellow lake (called *Yellow Lake*)  
With its crystallised shores, almost  
Named itself, as did the hill  
In the shape of Brian’s nose  
(Called *Brian’s Nose*). All this was new  
And varied, and meaningful,  
But when it came to animal  
And plant life, we have to admit  
We lack variety. So far, our ways  
Are birdless. Try carrying an egg  
From Earth to Mars without  
Breaking it and you’ll see how  
Difficult it is. And fledged birds  
Cannot cope with zero gravity,  
I’ve heard how they beat  
Their wings to no effect, to fall  
And drift regardless was something  
Neither hawks nor nightingales  
Could cope with. Insects were easier,  
They came in boxes freeze dried,  
Like gravel, though one had to remember  
To pack a packet of the seeds of their  
Feeding matter. So we planted nettle groves  
For the butterflies, dock, rock rose, gorse,  
But it is an edited evolution we enjoy,  
The minimum needed to sustain  
An eco system, we make up for  
The absence by a burgeoning of fairytales.  
And we tell our own histories  
Over and over. My father, and my  
Grandfather, dealt in horses – shoed them,  
Broke them, sold them at fairs  
In the fields beneath Neil Armstrong.  
My mother sold milk and butter.  
Her people were pig breeders  
In Nixon where the pink rills bubble  
And the downfall glitters on the plateau.

7\. *Looking Back*

The last millionaires fell from the sky  
A century ago. They brought with them  
Sad stories of the lives they had left,  
How a belief in unicorns and mermaids  
Had revived, how the cities had been  
Consumed by privet and laurel,  
Of sickness, reforestation, wars of religion.

Our children listened entranced  
And filled with longing to be  
In the world of islands with all  
Its rich, rewarding dangers.

Our atmosphere factories have begun  
To take on something of the mystery  
And charm of pyramids, though  
They remind me more of coffee pots,  
Or cafetières, and the pillowy mountains  
Behind them with the croissant-shaped  
Pebbles that strew their slopes always  
Remind me that what we have made here  
Is one vast room, world-sized,  
Near whose ceiling two acorn  
Moons float. Sofa hills. Lamp-stand mountain.  
You have to keep a sense of proportion.

Last week the mirrors were ripped  
To shreds as they re-entered the atmosphere,  
And poured their mirrory rain over a field  
The size of the state of Missouri.

![minarets](https://storage.ghost.io/c/3f/80/3f804bea-4b2d-4ddf-9ff0-6ec7d0afa5fa/content/images/2026/04/ansell-adams-minarets_565_Zzl43VC-1776425895340.jpg)

minarets

“Minarets”, Ansell Adams, 1930s

***Ecopoesis* is from Gerard Woodward’s new collection of poetry *We Were Pedestrians*, a Poetry Book Society recommendation, available from** [**Chatto & Windus**](http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/catalog/book.htm?command=search&db=main.txt&eqisbndata=0701178876&ref=opendemocracy.net)**.**