When We are Finished

After Robert Hayden

When we are finished, this wreck, this project
of negligence, so natural, so anticipated,  
when this earth succumbs to our mastery,
breaks under our will then shrugs us off in
reflex, spasm, when all is lost, irrecoverable,
when the politicians bob, bumping shoulders
with the poor in the rising waves, this earth,
this strip mined shell, this exhausted nature
will reset, renew and rise again and we
will not be remembered except in scars,
in broken marble, unreadable words,
in rusted twisted, shards. And green will grow
and from it will crawl creatures, beautiful
in the sun and savage in the dark who will
set themselves to remove our every mark.