Tuesday, January 6, 2015

DEKLARASI LIMA PADA KONGRES PENYAIR SEDUNIA KE 34.

Profesor Ernesto Kahan baru menghantarkan Deklarasi Lima sempena Kongres Penyair Sedunia di Peru baru-baru ini semalam. Deklarasi ini telah dibacakan oleh beliau sendiri pada majlis penutup Kongres tersebut. Deklarasi ini akan diterjemahkan ke dalam Bahasa Malaysia sedikit waktu lagi.

Al Quran telah menyatakan bahawa manusia adalah punca kepada kemusnahan alam sekitarnya sendiri. Bencana banjir yang sedang dihadapi sekarang tak pernah berlaku sebegitu buruk. Semoga Deklarasi Lima WCP ke 34 ini semakin menyedarkan kita kepada kesilapan kita sendiri. Selamat membaca.


                                                    WCP 34 and eco-poetry

                                                    The Lima Declaration

                                  Care for the "last lungs of the world": The Amazon
                                                            
                                                      By Ernesto Kahan *


In November 2010, I was invited to the Summit of Amazonian Countries. In my message sent by email because I couldn't attend, I repeated what I said in a recent interview published in Greece:

"Our society is in an existential crossroads. On one hand, it is very efficient the use of natural
resources, but on the other, such use is jeopardizing the continuity of life on our planet. On one
hand, new technologies and intensive production systems allow us to obtain an elevation quality
of life for all humanity, but on the other, new conflicts are threatening to use weapons,
especially nuclear which potentially can destroying our civilization and life on Earth.".i

The declaration of Manaus - Summit of Amazonian Countries on Climate Change of
November 26, 2009, affirmed that "Climate change is one of the most critical and urgent
challenges of today, which can only be addressed effectively through of a global effort to which
each country contributes according to their full capabilities in compliance with the principle of
common but differentiated responsibility ... " I want to draw attention to the close relationship
between pollution and the arms race, as well as with the size of the contaminant population. Warbrings death and pollution, but in the case of nuclear war only using 25% of the global arsenal, it will produce what it is called "Nuclear Winter" with the corresponding destruction of life on the planet.

The Amazon rainforest is perhaps the most important biological space necessary for life
on Earth. Its size and biological diversity are essential to the global climate system.
The "Living Planet Report 2014" recently introduced by the World Wildlife Fund
(WWF)ii states that "in 40 years half of the population of various kinds of animals has been
halved: Between 1970 and 2010, populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish
around the globe declined by 52 percent".

It is Important to remark than every day, in different parts of the world, 24,000 people
die of hunger (1 every 3.6 seconds, 3 out of 4 are children less than 5 years)
I am going to cite a fragment of the Statement on the 5th Summit
of Nobel Peace Laureates signed in Rome in November of 2004iii. I feel proud that the
organization International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, of which I was vice
president, is one of the signatories:

[…]"We call for the reduction of military expenditures and for conclusion of a treaty that
rejects brute force, respects ethnic, cultural, and political diversity and affirms justice,
compassion, and human solidarity. …" "We, the Nobel Peace Laureates and Laureate
organizations, pledge to work for the realization of these goals.”

That can only be achieved with a pact of harmony, which I understand, is the state of
balance between the components of a system, which by nature tends to entropy. It can be
achieved by tolerance, which is a negotiated agreement between the components (the nations).
Harmony must be the basis for peaceful coexistence among nations. Harmony can never be
eternal and complete, but it is essential at this stage of our civilization for humanity to survive.
On December 1, 1997, The New York Times published a big appeal called "Medical Warning:
Global Warming", which was addressed to the leaders of the world on the occasion of the
Kyoto Summit. The call was signed mainly by leading university professors of public health, and health professionals of the more important health centers and universities of the world, including myself, professor of Tel Aviv University. Israel. The Appeal mentioned that "the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of more than 2500 of the world's leading
scientists, has concluded that the continued accumulation of greenhouse gases from 1997 to
2010, will, over the next 100 years, warm the planet between 1 to 3 grades centigrade. … The
rate and magnitude of those changes, not seen on Earth for more than 130.000 years (when our
species Homo Sapiens first evolved), may severely affect life on land and in the oceans, will pose
enormous, unacceptable, risks for human health…"

Castellano, María Silvina, in her recent book entitled "La responsabilidad del Estado
frente al daño ambiental. El rol de los juecesiv,(The responsibility of the State against
environmental damage. The role of the judges), said: "We have a fundamental role to demand
justice in the light of new criteria for our right to clean environment and sustainable
development enshrined in our Constitution and reflected throughout the legal system .. . "
We writers and artisans of the written word, have the extraordinary opportunity and
mission of contributing to the clarification and sensitivity of the readers for the respect for life,
pluralism, human rights and protection of ecology.

At the end of the XX Century and beginning of the XXI Century, and because of the
ecological crises, a new poetic movement called Eco-Poetry is expanding and developing.
In the field of art in general, and literature in particular, poetry of the natural poems that
is an essential part of modern literature has become in the XXI Century, due to the ecological
crisis, more an awareness of the ecology in danger than an exaltation to the magnificence of
nature.

The 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001 and the 2007 Nobel
Peace Prize recipient, Al Gore, wrote the following poem v

One thin September soon / A floating continent disappears / In midnight sun
Vapors rise as/ Fever settles on an acid sea / Neptune's bones dissolve / Snow glides from the
mountain/ Ice fathers floods for a season / A hard rain comes quickly /Then dirt is parched/ […]

Eco poetry was very important to the great Walt Whitman (USA 1819 –1892) "This is
what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, […]vi. Whitman can be considered a
precursor of this modern movement.

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained; I stand
and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied - not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth. - Walt Whitman

Some of us, the poets who have in our poems a certain dedication and passion toward
and for the protection of life on Earth, and preservation of the environment, as well as for the
protection of the people and their culture, are mentioning "Gaia" or "Gea", the Goddess of the
Greek antiquity, who is the personification of the mother earth, the equivalent of the Roman:
"Terra Mater" or "Pacha Mama" of the Inca people. An example of such kind of poetry is one of the poems of my book "Ante Requiem":

Be free
people and man
from violence in "Pacha Mama"
Be free man
from the trap of the trapper
from the inequity of his gold
from the death of the intoxicated grass…
Be free!
from the gloom of men - His war

*Prof. Emeritus Dr. Ernesto Kahan MD University Professor - Poet – Physician
Tel Aviv University, Israel.
Academician of Honor - International Academy of Sciences, Technology, Education and Humanities (AICTEH) - Spain
Honorary President- Israeli Association of Writers. Spanish Branch
1st Vice President - World Academy of Arts and Culture USA
Former Vice President of IPPNW (Association awarded the Nobel Peace Prize) and the actual president of the Israeli Branch
1st Honor ary President of SIPEA – International Society of Poets Writers and Artists
Vice President Intl Forum for Literature and Culture of Peace (IFLAC)
Co-President -UHE- International Union of Hispano-American Writers
i
T Ioannides. Interview to Ernesto Kahan. Newspaper EPIKAIRA (Extra Time) of New Smyrna of Athens. May 28,
2009
ii http://noticiasdelaciencia.com/not/11580/en-40-anos-la-mitad-de-la-poblacion-de-varias-clases-de-animales-se-hareducido-a-la-mitad/
iii Statement of the 5th Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. November 12, 2004, Rome, Italy.
http://www.afsc.org/about/nobel/laureate-summit-statement.htm
iv Castellano, María Silvina, La responsabilidad del Estado frente al daño ambiental. El rol de los jueces. Editorial
Ad-Hoc . ISBN:978-950-894-958-5. 2014
v http://www.ehowenespanol.com/poemas-calentamiento-global-info_537445/
vi Walt Whitman. Hojas de hierba (fragmento). http://www.personarte.com/whitman.htm
   
NOTA; Puisi pertama penulis telah disiarkan dalam majalah Dewan Sastera pada tahun 1987. Puisi ni telah diterjemahkan ke dalam Bahasa Inggeris  dan emelkan kepada Prof Ernesto Kahan. 'Wonderful poem!' katanya.  



PORT DICKSON

passing by the beach of Port Dickson

I saw a big billboard

red in colour

posted on a wall eight feet high

with words written



DO NOT ENTER.PRIVATE PROPERTY,



so tell me

where else children go

to build sandcastles

or run around 

with kites in hands

made from old news paper

on week ends?



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