Who Will Tell Them? - Poem by Michael Simms

Paloma Kassi Liam Peter Jack Taehee Theo?

[whowilltellthem]

Who Will Tell Them? - By Michael Simms

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.

Goodbye passenger pigeon, once

So numerous men threw nets over trees

And fed you to pigs. Goodbye

Cuckoo bird who lays eggs

In the nests of strangers.

Goodbye elephant bird

Who frightened Sinbad.

Goodbye wigeon,

Curlew, lapwing, crake.

Goodbye Mascarene coot.

Sorry we never had a chance to meet.

Who knew you could wipe out

Everything? Who knew

You could crack the earth open

Like an egg? Who knew

The endless ocean

Was so small?

Right now, there are children playing on the shore.

There are children lying in hospital beds.

There are children trusting us.

Who will tell them what we’ve done?

[whowilltellthem]

Visit Original Link

You heard me.

[whowilltellthem]

Michael Simms was born in 1954, in Houston, Texas. He got his Bachelor’s degree from Southern Methodist University, and then received his masters degree from the University of Iowa. He would then go on to found a prominent publishing company in Pennsylvania. Since then, he has worked as an editor on more than 100 writing projects. Simms considers himself an environmentalist, and is vegan. 

[whowilltellthem]

group collaboration annotation

[whowilltellthem]

Who Will Tell Them?

The title differs from the rest of the poem in one key way, the use of the "them" pronoun. Throughout the rest of the writing, pronouns like "we", "us", and "you" are used as Simms refers to the readers and himself. There are numerous explanations for why the title has a grammatical change, but the most realistic one is that "Who Will Tell You" sounded too aggressive and confrontational, to the point where readers might skip past reading it.

The question being asked is also very vague, leaving the readers to wonder what "they" should be told, and giving incentive to read further.

[whowilltellthem]

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. 

[whowilltellthem]

Stanza #2:

"Goodbye passenger pigeon, once

So numerous men threw nets over trees

And fed you to pigs. Goodbye

Cuckoo bird who lays eggs

In the nests of strangers."

Simms uses the passenger pigeon as an example of one of the most notable instances of when an animal's extinction was entirely the fault of humans. In the early 1800’s, the passenger pigeon might have had the largest population out of any bird species in the world, with upwards of 3 billion in the wild. However, approaching the start of the 1900’s, their population began to decline rapidly. They were hunted in immense numbers for their meat, and faced decline due to deforestation. By the early 1900’s, the pigeons could no longer be found in the wild, and the last member of the species died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

The line “and fed you to pigs” refers to how pigs are often fed things that aren’t desirable or needed to us, pointing towards humans’ wasteful nature, and how the world around us is often treated as disposable.

The line "lays eggs in the nests of strangers" refers to a common behavior among cuckoo birds where they lay eggs in other birds' nests causing those birds to mistake the baby cuckoos for their own. While many species of cuckoo bird exist, the Saint Helena Cuckoo is an example of a species that went extinct due to deforestation, once again reinforcing Simms' stance on human carelessness.

[whowilltellthem]

Stanza #3

"Goodbye elephant bird

Who frightened Sinbad.

Goodbye wigeon,

Curlew, lapwing, crake.

Goodbye Mascarene coot.

Sorry we never had a chance to meet."

^ Sinbad

The Roc (also known as the Ice Bird) is a large eagle that is one of the "pets" of the chaos goddess Eris, and a supporting antagonist in Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, which is based on Sinbad the Sailor.

^Elephant bird

The largest specimens the elephant bird Aepyornis were 10 feet tall and weighed about 1,000 pounds—still enough to make it the biggest bird that ever lived. However, the "bird mimic" dinosaurs that preceded the elephant bird by tens of millions of years and had roughly the same body plan, were in fact elephant-sized.

Source:

Meet the World's Largest Bird That Was Discovered on Madagascar

The largest bird ever discovered, the elephant bird, was the terror of Pleistocene Madagascar, and its extinction coincided with human settl

Analysis:

"Goodbye elephant bird"

"Who frightened Sinbad."

The reference to “Sinbad” is a direct symbol for strife and discord.

On the other hand, Simms is using the "elephant bird" as representation for protection and prosperity. The elephant birds protected prey from predators such as the Sinbad, during their time on earth, but became extinct because of human’s footprint on human earth.

Simms uses the birds as a metaphor for predator versus protectors and emphasizes the impact that humans have on nature by eliminating these protectors. By allowing the only creature that scared "Sinbad" and all that it represents to die off, mankind has allowed chaos to run unchallenged once more.

"Goodbye wigeon,

Curlew, lapwing, crake.

Goodbye Mascarene coot.

Sorry we never had a chance to meet."

All these birds have gone extinct, in one way or another, due to mankind's influence. By using the word "we" in the last line, Simms makes a direct point of holding both him and the readers (or all of humanity) responsible for the demise of these poor birds.

[whowilltellthem]

Stanza #4

"Who knew you could wipe out

Everything? Who knew

You could crack the earth open

Like an egg? Who knew

The endless ocean

Was so small?"

Analysis:

Why did Simms choose to relate the earth to an egg?

Like an egg the earth has many layers to get to the center. And the fact that he is indicating that we are breaking the earth to the core, it only shows how much damage that we are doing to the planet. In this poem the "egg" is breaking apart, but because eggs are a symbol of new life and a new beginnings, maybe Simms is trying to portray a theory that the earth would be much better and alive without the humans existing, so therefore the only solution is to explode and get rid of it all. Just a theory...

[whowilltellthem]

Stanza #5

"Right now, there are children playing on the shore.

There are children lying in hospital beds.

There are children trusting us.

Who will tell them what we’ve done?"

The first line of the final stanza connects to stanza #4, but also ties back to the last two lines of stanza #1, through the line of the “children playing by the shore” of the poisoned ocean. The imagery of a child playing invokes a sense of naivety and innocence, in turn reinforcing the adults’ corruption of the environment in contrast.

Simms once again emphasizes that there are children who will eventually inherit the world, and are “trusting” the adults to make the right choices with it. However, in the final line of the poem, Simms makes clear that our world has long since been mishandled, considering the consequences that could have been avoided if not for human carelessness.

[whowilltellthem]

"It turns out you can kill the earth / Crack it open like an egg." By Liam Kochakji

[whowilltellthem]

“sorry we never had the chance to meet”