the deepening ground

Today is August 4, 2026″ – and seventy-six years ago, Ray Bradbury imagined a future full of Smart Homes, artificial intelligence, and the loss of humanity. Thirty-two years before that in 1918, struck with the horrors of World War One and the Spanish Flu Pandemic, Sara Teasdale presented her vision of a world restored, nature that endured in spite of man’s smear and smudge upon the earth, to quote from Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Rather than just plug along unthinking with our daily routines, I invite you to pause and read both Teasdale’s short but compelling poem and Bradbury’s prescient short story. It’s one of the best ways to prevent Bradbury’s chilling vision of August 5th.

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There Will Come Soft Rains
by Sara Teasdale

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

From The Language of Spring, edited by Robert Atwan, published by Beacon Press, 2003.

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There Will Come Soft Rains
by Ray Bradbury

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o ‘clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!

In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunny side up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.

“Today is August 4, 2026,” said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, “in the city of Allendale, California.” It repeated the date three times for memory’s sake. “Today is Mr. Featherstone’s birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita’s marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills.”

Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes…

(Read the complete story at the link provided in the title and here!)

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Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1985), 166-172.