200 



CONSERVATION 



Marya Mannes 



Wasteland 



Reprinted with the permission of the author 

 and pubhsher from Nlorc in Anger. Philadel- 

 phia, J. B. Lippincott, 1958. 



Cans. Beer cans. Glinting on the 

 verges of a million miles of roadways, 

 lying in scrub, grass, dirt, leaves, sand, 

 mud, but never hidden. Piels, Rhein- 

 gold, Ballantine, Schaefer, Schlitz, 

 shining in the sun or picked by moon 

 or the beams of headlights at night; 

 washed by rain or flattened by wheels, 

 but never dulled, never buried, never 

 destroyed. Here is the mark of savages, 

 the testament of wasters, the stain of 

 prosperit)'. 



Who are these men who defile the 

 grassy borders of our roads and lanes, 

 who pollute our ponds, who spoil the 

 purity of our ocean beaches with the 

 empty vessels of their thirst? Who are 

 the men who make these vessels in 

 millions and then say, "Drink— and 

 discard"? What society is this that can 

 afford to cast away a million tons of 

 metal and to make of wild and fruitful 

 land a garbage heap? 



What manner of men and women 

 need thirty feet of steel and t^vo hun- 

 dred horsepower to take them, singly, 

 to their small destinations? Who de- 

 mand that what they eat is wrapped so 

 that forests are cut down to make the 

 paper that is thrown away, and what 



thev smoke and chew is sealed so that 

 the sealers can be tossed in gutters and 

 caught in twigs and grass? 



What kind of men can afford to 

 make the streets of their towns and 

 cities hideous with neon at night, and 

 their roadwavs hideous with signs bv 

 day, wasting beauty; who leave the car- 

 casses of cars to rot in heaps; who spill 

 their trash into ravines and make smok- 

 ing mountains of refuse for the town's 

 rats? What manner of men choke off 

 the life in rivers, streams and lakes with 

 the waste of their produce, making 

 poison of water? 



Who is as rich as that? Slowlv the 

 wasters and despoilers are impoverish- 

 ing our land, our nature, and our 

 beauty, so that there will not be one 

 beach, one hill, one lane, one meadow, 

 one forest free from the debris of man 

 and the stigma of his improvidence. 



Who is so rich that he can squan- 

 der forever the wealth of earth and 

 water for the trivial needs of vanity or 

 the compulsive demands of greed; or 

 so prosperous in land that he can sacri- 

 fice nature for unnatural desires? The 

 earth we abuse and the living things 

 we kill will, in the end, take their re- 



