Yes, Austin, time is running out

Sometimes we are fortunate to have amongst us poets and visionaries who quietly capture the state of mind of our human condition.

Today I join the countless mourners who respectfully salute the contribution of Austin and who see the footprints that man has “left on the sand while walking through time.” Thank you Austin, you have made an invaluable contribution by adding tremendous value to our diluted heritage and our vanishing consciousness. Over the decades your song has mirrored and empowered the beleaguered stance of child rights, environmental, anti- war, anti-nuclear, equal rights, women rights, anti corruption, transparency, anti-racist and other public interest activists.

“I see a frightened humanity, a sad and confused society And it saddens me. How shall it be in time to come? …What shall be next?” captures our growing uncertainties in a threatened future where water has run dry and now is manmade, where food is tainted with chemicals, where our air, our water and our seas are contaminated, where our soil is barren.

I wonder what Austin would have said about the sick fish in La Brea because “Time is running out as we eat and drink species at the brink of being extinct … Can this world withstand this constant misuse and abuse by the hands of man As they try to shape this world in a way to fit in with all their plans.

Time is running out.”

Gary Aboud Port-of-Spain