“I want to tell you this:
we had to stop.
We knew it.
We all felt that our doing was too furious.
Being inside things. All outside of us.
To shake up every hour – to make it fruitful.
We had to stop and we couldn’t.
It had to be done together.
To slow our race down.
But we couldn’t.
There was no human effort that could hold us back.
And since it was the common tacit desire as an unconscious will –
perhaps our species obeyed, untied the chains that kept armored our seed.
Opened the most secret fissures and let it in.
Maybe that’s why there was a jump of species afterwards
– from the bat to us.
Something in us wanted to widen up.
Maybe not, I don’t know.
Now we are at home.
What is happening is powerful.
And there is gold, I think, in this strange time.
Maybe there are gifts.
Nuggets of gold for us.
If we help each other.
There is a very strong call of the species now
and as a species now everyone must think.
A common fate keeps us here.
We knew it. But not very well.
It’s either all of us or no one.
The Earth is powerful. Really alive.
I can hear it thinking of a thought that we don’t know about.
And what’s going on now ?
Let’s consider the Earth does not move.
If the law that keeps the whole universe under its guidance,
if what happens, I wonder,
if it is not the full expression of that law which also governs us –
just like every star –
every particle of the cosmos.
What if it is the dark matter what keeps everything together
in an fervor of life,
with the sickle of death coming to balance each species.
Keep it inside, according to its measure, in its place, in its guidance.
It is not us that made Heaven.
An imposing, speechless voice now tells us to stay at home,
like children that did something wrong,
without knowing it,
and they will not be kisses,
nor hugged.
Everyone is inside an abrupt slowdown, that brings us back to,
perhaps the slowness of our ancestors, the mothers.
Look more to the Sky, is dyeing into a dead ocher.
Making bread for the first time.
Look closely at a face.
Sing slowly for a child to fall sleep.
for the first time shaking your hand with another hand,
feeling strong the alliance.
We are together.
Just one organism.
We carry within us the whole species.
Inside of us we save it.
From the grip of a palm with someone’s palm,
to that simple act that is now forbidden –
we will return with an expanded understanding.
We will be present, more cautious, I believe.
Our hand will be more delicate
in the making of our life.
Now we know
how sad it is
to stay a meter away “.
Nine March two thousand and twenty
Mariangela Gualtieri
