‘Silent Spring’ by Rachel Carson was published in 1962, which made it the first of the many warnings about what we are doing to the planet.
Silent comes the morning
of a new world;
Fingers of light stroke the shadows away.
Still, empty plain quietly unfurled,
And nothing stirs a neo-primeval day.
Shadow-shapes slowly sharpen and emerge
But nothing there watches firming forms;
Absent dawn chorus sings a silent dirge
In sad rememberence of other dawns.
Not violence or hate have decimated
This land, nor has the blast of war levelled all.
Only a thoughless greed dissipated,
Used up, consumed and left this sunlit pall.
The only fault was not to understand -
This planet’s finite: proud man, stay your hand!