Joanne Chung 2C/06

The man-made waterfall

The water gushes furiously
Like his lost brother in the wild
But that occurs quite naturally
While this is concrete’s man-made child

His brother hums with life in green
But he has no life of his own
Powered by man and mad machines
He can only lament and groan

He tries to hide under the fern
Ashamed of failing to be real
His false pretences are met with spurn
This is man’s great Achilles’ heel

Oh how we try to imitate
The magnificence of the earth
But man just cannot replicate
Nature in all its awe and mirth

We try, we fail, we never learn
Nature is supreme, Water should
Flow naturally beneath the fern
Just like its brother in the woods

epilogue
When I saw the numerous man-made waterfalls at the entrance of the Botanic Gardens, I remembered the few lines in William Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ – ‘What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?’ The waterfalls seemed so miserable compared to natural waterfalls and this was a reflection of how man tried to replicate nature’s gifts but fails. The message of the poem essentially is that man’s creation cannot measure up to the grandeur of Nature.

-Joanne Chung 2C/06