Stanza #1
"It turns out you can kill the earth,
Crack it open like an egg.
It turns out you can murder the sea,
Poison your own children
Without even thinking about it."
The tone of the first stanza appears to be sarcastically nonchalant, prefacing being able to “kill the Earth” and “poison the sea” with a casual “it turns out you can”. The purpose of this was to likely emphasize how the destruction of our planet is often not taken seriously.
The first line of the poem serves to personify the Earth, presenting it as a living entity that can be “killed”. The imagery within the second line describes the Earth as “like an egg”, which can be symbolic for the growth of new life. However, in the act of cracking an egg open, whatever is growing inside will die.
The lines regarding “poisoning your own children without even thinking about it”, could be interpreted literally as the negative health effects that can stem from pollution, but also figuratively as how a new generation will be forced to pick up the pieces of a world that was carelessly destroyed by those who came before them.