THE TURNING CIRCLE OF A BUCKET WHEEL EXCAVATOR

by Frank Joussen

Tweet via “Thousands hit German streets to protest coal mine expansion” in TRTWorld, January 14, 2022

keep it in the ground a famous activist from Sweden

says about Luetzerath’s now world infamous coal

while this monster of a word this monster of a machine

the gigantic bucket wheel excavator

is rearing its dragon head

over the edge of its devilishly long and deep pit

the monster’s casting a lasting shadow

over the children of the end game for the climate

who are risking life and limb

not to mention imminent law enforcement

in a useless attempt to stop the co2 madness

of a so-called green government

of course, they could leave

the coal in the ground

but the bucket wheel excavator

would have to go to another place

and can you imagine the costs

of turning this beast of a vehicle around?

In a matter of days this past week, more than 1,000 police officers cleared out the hundreds of climate activists who had sworn to protect the small village, once home to 90 people but no church, which was scheduled to be razed as part of a sprawling open-pit coal mine in western Germany. —The New York Times, January 15, 2023. Photo: A bucket-wheel excavator mines for coal at the Garzweiler coal mine near Luetzerath on November 2, 2022. CREDIT: Michael Probst / AP via The Atlantic.

Editor’s Note: The New Verse News published Frank Joussen’s “No Last Homely House in Luetzerath” on November 4, 2021. 

Frank Joussen is a German teacher and writer, peace and one world activist. His publications include two selections of his poetry. He has co-edited two international anthologies of poetry/fiction in India and one of short stories in Germany. His poems and short stories have also been published in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies in India, Australia, G.B., the Republic of Ireland, Germany, Romania, Malta, the U.S.A., Canada, China, Thailand and Japan; some of them have been translated into German, Romanian, Hindi and Chinese.

NO LAST HOMELY HOUSE IN LUETZERATH

by Frank Joussen

The yawning black-brown scar in the earth that is Germany’s Garzweiler coal mine has already swallowed more than a dozen villages. Centuries-old churches and family homes have been razed and the land they were built on torn away. Farmland has disappeared, graveyards have been emptied. “All destroyed for coal,” says Eckhardt Heukamp, surveying the vast pit that drops away from the edge of his fields, 20 miles west of Cologne. But there’s still more under his feet to be mined. Six more villages are threatened. —The Independent (UK), October 31, 2021

The last house in Luetzerath is white.

White like the presidential palace in Washington?

White like Thomas Mann’s house of exile in California?

White like a blank sheet of paper!

Words fail me to describe

the camp, the tree houses,

the posts of activists

directly in front of the oversized pit.

 

On my long bike tour, in the headwind,

from Erkelenz I planned on

calling it The Last Homely House.

Why not? Is the fruitful homeland of Erkelenz

with its old farms and villages

not a cosy, peaceful Shire?

Isn’t it the Fellowship’s aim,

en route to unknown, unprecedented dangers,

to gather strength at The Last Homely House

before the annihilation of the Evil

so that all of the cultivated world

won’t be destroyed?

 

Sure. But a homely house

needs homeland around it,

needs safety for heroes

recognized by all and sundry

instead of a stand-off between

silent security men

and masked activists.

The latter are friendly, talk to me.

Why not? Doesn’t the land

they wish to protect

belong to all plants, animals, humans

on it?

Even to the security men

when they, without their bright

yellow and black vests,

are back home with their loved ones,

reading their children stories

about the great adventure

to save the world?

 

 

Frank Joussen is a German teacher and writer, peace and one world activist. His publications include two selections of his poetry. He has co-edited two international anthologies of poetry/fiction in India and one of short stories in Germany. His poems and short stories have also been published in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies in India, Australia, G.B., the Republic of Ireland, Germany, Romania, Malta, the U.S.A., Canada, China, Thailand and Japan; some of them have been translated into German, Romanian, Hindi and Chinese.