Rainforests
by Gord Sellar
Ai! tan gras enveya m’en ve
de cui qu’eu veya jauzion,
meravilhas ai, car desse
lo cor de dezirer no-m fon.
–Bernart de Ventadorn, “Can vei le lauzeta mover”
Rainforests are dangerous things, they threaten us
with the imminence of their collapse: they are
mandelbrot webworks a thousand miles wide
whose guts shine and glitter like the sky
at night, spangled with the glossy wings of things
too numerous to count. And the greenness fills
everything it touches, spreading like sick.
And listen to me: every human thing,
each jealousy, each fear, desire, thought
is a rainforest perched on the edge of its own collapse.
— Montreal, 1999
February 8, 2012