the god of small things
from willa beale | writ July 2024 - March 2025
Heaven is my father and earth is my mother, and I, a small child, find myself placed intimately between them.
What fills the universe I regard as my body; what directs the universe I regard as my nature.
All people are my brothers and sisters; all things are my companions.
— Zhang Zai
I
ain't i thee, the God of Small Things? ain't i somethin' you cannot condemn? in humility and mirth i beseech our sensibility: recollect thyself. what has become our Nature? listen: we are not so well anymore though well-off we may be than those before. we are recalcitrant and protected. we think naught of the ten thousand things. yet, something is there in you weeping when you see the pigeons littering our cities— we forgot them. abandoned them, we did. they served us; we cared for them and their use. then, we made a useful thing and made the pigeons useless. we solved a problem we never had. we gave up a connection to something slightly more than we can be. much it is with so much: i enjoy to grow a meal. i do not enjoy to catch my salmon in the aisles. i do not enjoy to harvest the Earth from the cold glowing racks where plenty oppresses. i do not enjoy my granola baked into the silvery waste that litters all the crust of my home. i do not enjoy to taste the honey and butter from the glistening plastic hives and udders. you may not consider this, but i must; for, i am thee: the God of Small Things. we do not speak for the trees. we choke on their language all hours of the day and night. they'd hear them if they'd only listen—Hey! you'd hear them if you'd only listen. when the spiders nest in the corners of my dwelling i leave them where they rest in their crooks and barrows. the spiders are my kin and all the grass blades and all the weeds i tear from my flower beds and all the mud i clean from my trembling hands and all the worms crapping out my compost pile. when you wake i am already considering the guilt of us and the feckless cruelty of our conveniences. you have grown accustomed, fellow, to shitting where you eat. no, it cannot be hidden: Nature tells it how it is. we are an animal and we are like a dumb animal. the spiders do not turn the ancient waste of the Earth into the gloaming of the new ancient: Our Time Here. the spiders do not even throw away their homes but leave them to desiccate in the empty endless wind. the spiders are wiser than i; they care naught for humans. they care naught for what we have done to their planet. they know we shall surely perish ere they have gone away. they know they are but an echo of yesterday and tomorrow. we cannot fathom such an experience as theirs. instead, we think shiny things are a playground for experience. we would rather suck the marrow from our bones than ever admit we're slaves of our own making. we would rather clutch symbols and call them matter; clutch the fluorescence and call it photosynthesis. we would rather sink our teeth into perfection than hold reverence for the Tedious Good of the Imperfect. i wonder sometimes why the artists are so feckless and stupid, why they are so caught up in making money instead of art— Musicians! hear me: you are not whores of the machine. Writers! hear me: you are not the prophets of your struggle(~). Painters! hear me: your subjects are in jeopardy. Actors! hear me: your mimicry fails to justify reality. Artists, please, hear Me: there is no one else who may give a voice to the struggle of our Earth. I've seen what awaits tomorrow in the pearly effervescence of the neon-gilded ephemera placating our senses. Nothing is guaranteed. We cast our lot with hooligans. These old boys won't get us anywhere better than here. sigh. then, of course, a deeper sigh: a true human sough. I've soared with the Eagles and I've slithered with the Snakes and I've been Everywhere In Between. There are no guarantees. The only thing I can be certain of is the existence of Her: Great Pale Blue Dot against the Vastness of Space. I live Here. i live here. To me, it is the Loudest Place in the Universe. To me, it is the only thing we may refer to with the scandalous word: hope.
II
You, yes, You who live in the city: You know there is no home for You there. Your freedom does not belong to You. Only in Nature can You find a Freedom that is Yours. Only in Nature can Freedom nurture Your renewal. All efforts of the city-dwelling folk are in vanity. It does not serve the Animal, the Earth, or the Self. It serves only the solipsistic inter-being of the Anthropocene. It is not Free: it is a slave to its own unmaking, Useless Death. i am not a city-dweller. i am the God of Small Things. i care naught for a social imposition. i answer the dirt alone. i do not manifest my destiny; i drag, dragged by my dragging. a city-dweller cannot comprehend this in their senselessness. We need time to lie fallow. if you cannot leave the city, speak to the pigeons you fail to herald as fellow pedestrians. speak to the irreverent grass pushing between the pavement and to the sunlight slipping past the smog and awnings. if you are able to walk in the fields and hills as I do daily, meet me in the meadow past the eerie pine's queer communion. there, may We find good conversation and a better path from here. there, may we hatch a plan to kill the slavery of the city. We cannot maintain the fertility without renewal. We cannot overcome the bullshit without digging through the fecund matter. nothing you have left is important to us. not yet. You are but a passing thought of the species' backhand. Slap! You are dead now. what was it all for? did You find the happiness You deserved? or was it only Your entitlement? i sit alone here, the God of Small Things, solitary and content. my children perish. evil, celebrated even by those who think themselves Good. there is too much to say. i am not your teacher, only a Professor. go now, and think until your eyes bleed. i will send a slug to lick your face clean.
III
ain't you listening, now; is it alright? do you get the point now? i ain't thee, the God of Small Things i am thee, the God of Small Things ain't i thee, the God of Small Things? ain't i some thing you cannot condemn? no, n'ain't a thing you cannae condemn. language loses meaning in the spaces between. You wrote this, Friend. isn't You that believes? goddamn if you weren't proselytizin'. shush! — the sparrows are singing. the chickadees creepin'. the blue jays a-buzzin' and the small thrush a-knockin'. ain't they thee, the God of Small Things? must we to harm even the Little Things? must we to skin alive the foxes, the marmots? must we to masticate the useless chicks? must we to harm even the Little Things? where has gone that God of Small Things? i am She, He—i am Something, as Thee. come, come, sit by Our fire in a day before Days: listen, we've got to get a bit better here— we've got to get a bit better for Tomorrow— there is much to live for Tomorrow. there is much to live for. do not feel guilty, do not feel guilty. i am guilty, too. i wrote this on a machine made by child labour. i wrote this in a time fuelled by techno-feudalism. i wrote this in spaces that did not belong to me. but, it's okay, because You wrote this with me. You wrote this with me. it's okay because we are the God of Small Things. don't you remember? You are the God of Small Things.
IV
small green, gushing from the grey, gushing from the pale, from the sleet, from the shit small green, unordinary, inconsequential, small green gushing from the splendour small green, gushing splendour, evergreen small and wasting and gushing and wasting small green, small green, saturnine, life-giving small green, unending, fair fruit of desiccated stars small green, God of Small Things, god, wasting god, small green gushing God of Small Things here, the thing, the green, the small gods, the grey firmament and the grey gushing the great grey makes way for a great green God of Small Things small green and the God of Small Things towering like a mighty, unbendable tree, like an undrinkable sea. the God of Small Things attends thee, apprehends thee, upends the uncertainty and conditions the certainty small green, the Living Thing, the Entirety, the Loudest Place in the Universe, the domain of Small Things chittering worms and the quiet of the soil water and the sun's honest embrace we have arrived.
V
when if you on a fractal night deny the incoming thoughts and feelings of your abysmal striving when if you cannot condemn the utter living or you cannot unpluck the frayed seams don't you when you know i am watching know that you are thee, the God of Small Things?
VI
lo, i do not prescribe a thing to thee: do not cultivate a moment without consideration. do not cultivate a garden without a plan, see? do not cultivate a moment without consideration. you've journeyed, you and me: this is meditation. breathe deep—listen! that is Your Earth singing. listen! listen! shush! that is your Earth singing. breathe deep, breathe deep. sing in harmony. i do not prescribe a thing to thee: you know already. do not cultivate a moment without consideration. do not read a poem without enduring. do not write a poem without humility. do not consider a poem without thinking. thus with all things also do not contend unless. variously jealous, sadistic, cruel, or insecure— absurd is the human animal. once were we children laughing in the undergrowth, living; simple, no concepts, only suffering and pleasure. do not be a thing of grizzled complexity; hear! the merriment and do not sing for something forsaken by your experience; rejoice! a childhood is never spent; it only ends. but laughter resonates from the hollows to the heavens. laughter resonates from the beginning to the end. come here. fit in the warm hollow of my arms, my love. let me embrace you as i would have as an infant. let me embrace you as i would have as an ancient friend. let me you as would the earth after, God of me, as would earth after God of anything, let me embrace you on the windswept after of Oblivion Of the solitude make new our nature rather to renew from solitude the inter-being Small, unconscionable acts and creatures everyday make all of us All of Us Things we do not notice, things we undo, things we Are, when we Are, if we Are: ain't i thee, God of Small Things?
Afterword
thank you for reading this work, Sweet Reader.
consider: Language as ecological resistance.
the poem never ends.
it only changes hands.
our greatest gift as animals is our capacity to invoke or incite illicit ‘meaning’.
the poem never ends.
if we are aware, ought we not to be responsible as well?
i hope the coming days are lovely for You.
— wb