Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

1

The highway goes through
the Amazon’s brain
like an ice pick through an eye-socket.

First we clear her synapses
then she forgets her animals.

2

Our bulldozers drive through
the rainbow boa of her cortex
like a scalpel –

those sleeping coils
still dreaming up new species.

3

hallucinations we’ve blitzed
with ECT.

The bilateral current purrs
through her frontal lobes

like a forest of songbirds
electrocuted by rain.

4

Afterwards, her thoughts are nestless,
except for a few chicks
up in the last ironwoods,
patrolled by armed guards.

Scientists climb ropes
to monitor her stats,
bring motherless macaws

down to incubators,
measuring their wings,
weighing naked souls.

5

as if she’s a patient
in the Sleep Room
who won’t wake –

her dreams treelines
traced by the EEG pen.

6

The only animals left
are grainy films
on camera traps

7

and a recording of the last
musician-wren

whose still small voice
is like the beginning of the world.