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Council on Energy, Environment and Water Integrated | International | Independent

What if the stars looked up on Earth?

By Arunabha Ghosh

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would it seem as radiant on the darkest of nights?
Would it, too, be a beacon of white
teasing the stars with winks?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they map the contours of the tallest massifs,
or plumb the deepest depths in the sea?
And would they notice the difference?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they see — and observe — patterns on a snowflake,
veins on a leaf, sand as a single grain,
or mica lending glimmer to a rock?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they count a million shades of blue,
marvelling at Prussian, cobalt, cerulean as hues
but choosing periwinkle as favourite?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they sweat in the humidity of the rainforest,
or be seared in the heat of manmade tragedy
that engulfs them each year?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they capture a Noah’s Arc of wildlife with a bullet,
a trap, a camera, or sharpened blade,
serving it up on a plate, discarded as trophy?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they waddle in streams or swim in mighty rivers,
be swelled by their banks or dammed up as mere tanks?
Where would they flow out of here?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they be blinded by photons from artificial illumination,
or the miracle of bioluminescent phytoplankton?
What would stimulate their imagination?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they envy the compounds, the chemicals and the elements?
They who’re kindling, fused from just hydrogen and helium,
would they bottle up some oxygen to take back home?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they spot drills pockmarking its heart with cavities?
Adorned with oils and ores, would they investigate the hypocrisy:
“Pray to God, yet to Mammon the temples build”?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they venture here but discover an upturned world?
Diseased, deceased, virulent and violent,
these monuments to which flags unfurl?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they be repelled away, or explore; would they gravitate?
Seek adventure, to seduce an orbiting celestial sphere,
or sigh relief that it’s far by some lightyears?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they discern more than a hint of hope, or the tints of dawn?
Would they notice the orange envelope the black,
and would they realise another day is born?

What if the stars looked up on Earth?
Would they detect a father and daughter, giggling, as they hike together,
smelling rain, holding pinecones and feathers?
Would they know this globe is not his, but hers?

Earth Day, 22 April 2020
Gurgaon
0542 hours