ghost town

Ghost Town : an elegy to the demise of humankind

Some remarkable changes happened to the world in lockdown because of the novel virus pandemic disease. The ozone layer healed itself, smog disappeared from the poisoned atmosphere of our over-industrialized cities, wildlife found the confidence to play in the ample space suddenly available, the beaches became cleaner because the oceans were no more being polluted with non-degradable waste, the aggregate pollution index of the world dropped appreciably. In summary, the world could have become a healthier place to live …if not for the raging virus.
Where did this virus come from? Its origin still has all the scientists of the world baffled. Indeed they do not know much about it other than it is highly contagious and it kills human beings in huge swathes. More worrying is the revelation that its bouquet of symptoms keeps getting bigger as the days go by and it appears not intending to go away. The medical world is confronted by a nightmare, a microscopic size enemy which seems to exist for the primary purpose of eliminating human being from the planet.
Was the virus created by Nature as a defensive weapon to protect itself from irreparable damage? The healing during the lockdown certainly suggests so, and the consequences of such a possibility are immensely scary. When the infections sufficiently abate, we shall all once more return to normal life and we shall return to contributing more pollution problems for the living world, effectively reversing its gains of the lockdown.
Some of us can visualize Nature as a single sentient entity, or several of such. And we can imagine how angry such an omnipresent being should presently be with the human misuse of natural resources. And we are worried that such a furious entity will in future; again unleash the current virus or something similar, with more disastrous consequences – next time killing in huge millions or billions? Man will quickly go the way of the dinosaurs, and all of the cities of the world will become like ghost towns.
The new song, Ghost Town, by the rising dub poet called I-Scream, predicts the coming of such a dystopian future. It predicts the apocalyptic arrival of an avenging entity who would be described as the King of the Ghost Town and would vow to reign till the end of time. Why has he come? His mission is to protect the vanishing rainforests, the poisoned creeks, the injured sky, the polluted seas, and all the essential elements of the natural environment, from viciously destructive humankind. The final lines of the song are a sad elegy to the death of the human race and a chilling fanfare to the ascent of the avenging king:

The bare world, silent, not a voice to be heard
The bare world sad, somber as a graveyard
The bare world peaceful, with wildlife dancing around
The bare world shouting aloud: this is a ghost town

Ghost Town passes a message of the need for humankind to be kind to nature for a reciprocal gesture. The song underscores the requirement to do a rethink on degradation of the natural environment in the off-chance that the current novel virus may just be the precursor to another pandemic disease which will be a lot nastier. But do we care?
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