The Typewriter and the Tide (Rachel Carson)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You were a marine biologist
who could write
and that combination
turned out to be
the most dangerous thing
the chemical industry
had encountered
since the labor union
because a scientist
who cannot write
publishes a paper
and a scientist
who can write
publishes a book
that your mother
reads on the porch
and the book
had the warm
salt-paper smell
of a tide pool
transcribed
by a woman
whose Wernicke's area
processes the ocean
and the sentence
in the same
neural pass.

[Verse 2]
You found
the birds.
The birds
along the coast
were dying
in a pattern
that matched
the spraying schedule
of a chemical
and you followed
the pattern
the way a detective
follows the money
and the money
went
all the way up
the food chain
and the top
of the food chain
was us.

[Chorus]
The chemical companies
said you were
hysterical.
The chemical companies
said you were
a childless woman
worried about birds
and the word
*childless*
had the stale
institutional tang
of a courtroom
exhibit
entered
by a man
who has confused
discrediting
a witness
with disproving
a theorem
and the theorem
did not
notice
the confusion.

[Outro]
You were dying
of a tumor
while you wrote it
and you did not tell
anyone
because the companies
would have used
the tumor
to discredit
the science
and the science
was more important
than the scientist
and the scientist
knew that
and kept
typing.

The birds
came back.
The spring
has not
been silent since.
The typewriter
that a dying woman
used
to unbuild
an industry
is still
the loudest
quiet thing
in the century
and the keys
are still warm.

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