Package for a Distant Future- Sylvia Kantaris

Sylvia Kantaris

The Poem

Dear inheritor,
Since you have dared to open this container,
you must be living in some far distant
unimaginable future,
and I am writing from a time of
earth before your world began -
we call it the era of Modern Man
(a bit after the Cro-Magnon)
Enclosed you will find evidence
of our existence,
a skein of yellow silk;
a carving of a child of unknown origin
with normal limbs and features;
a violin;
some lilac seeds;
the Song of Solomon.
The selection is not scientific, just
flotsam and jetsam of our civilisation.
I hope you like them.
We had a lot of things we did not
like and could have lived without.
Do not invent gods.
I hope the earth is nearly clean again.
Sow the lilac seeds in damp soil
and if they grow and flower, and
if you can, smell them after rain.

Summary-
“Package for a Distant Future” by Sylvia Kantaris appears to be a piece of work of the rather rare science fiction genre. The remarkability of the poem lies in its ironic nature. The poem can be interpreted as the poet’s attempt to save or civilization from getting lost in the tides of time or from a pessimistic point of view, it may even be the poet’s sarcastic presentation of the deteriorating modern world disrupting the course of nature. Whatever be the intentions of Sylvia Kantaris, she does not fail to impress her by her vivid imagery arising due to her unusual choices of selection.

The poem starts off as a first-person narrative with the poet addressing an “Inhibitor”. The poet further explains that the poem is actually a letter that he will be enclosing in a time capsule along with certain other things that she has kept inside the capsule as a means of reminder to our descendants or rather, in a more appropriate way, to the people who would evolve from us after millions of years after our civilization ends, that the modern day homo sapiens once existed on Earth. The poet says since someone is reading this letter, he must be living in a “far-distant unimaginable future” millions of years from now and the World as he will know it then might even not have started as yet today. She tells the inhibitor that we belong to the era that succeeds the Age of Cro-Magnon, or the European Early Man, which is historically accurate. She says that she has enclosed evidences that the Homo sapiens really existed in this World at some point of time. For this, she encloses a skein of yellow silk, a carving of a child, a violin, the Song of Solomon, and some lilac seeds. Even though she goes on to say that the selection of the choices is random, and not scientific, we beg to differ. What she has enclosed in the capsule can be interpreted in either of ways—a rather optimistic one, or a pessimistic one.

Optimistically speaking, the skein of yellow silk might show our evolved descendants that something so beautiful existed in our times and maybe they realize and find the art of extracting silk from silk worms. The carving of a child might help them visualize how we looked, and the violin might be a soothing addition to their music since it must be an obsolete thing by then. The Song of Solomon would be a beautiful guide to the culture and society as we have today, and the lilac seeds will make their fields a lot more beautiful when they bloom, and will multiply quickly since each stem grows into a new plant. If we see the poem from a pessimistic point of view, it sounds exquisitely ironical. Since the Modern World we live in today is degrading at a rate that is far from being comfortable, our living conditions and vegetation has been affected irreversibly. Influenced by this realization, the narrator might have enclosed the skein of silk cloth, thinking at this rate of degradation, by the time the capsule is opened, the ecology might not even be able to sustain silkworms, so the skein might serve as a relic to the evolved Man that something so beautiful existed once. With large number of children being born handicapped or deformed, the poet doubts that by the time this Inhibitor evolves whether there will be a single child born normal. The pessimistic approach is further supported by the fact that the poet emphasizes that the child has normal limbs and features, which might not be the case million years from now, so atleast they’ll have a portrait that how a normal infant born sans the deformities looked. The World has already seen two World Wars, and many more bilateral ones. With so much angst, fury, and self-superiority plaguing the people, the poet doubts whether something as music that brings tranquility to life would exist at that time; keeping this in mind she encloses the violin too. The Song of Solomon will teach them the auspiciousness of the relationship between a man and a woman which she doubts will be eroded away from the society by that time. Similarly, she doubts that the entire Earth would be degraded so much by that time, that there will be no beauty of Nature left on Earth. So she encases the lilac seeds which would give an aesthetic beauty to the fields when they bloom.

What she goes on to say further supports the pessimistic approach to the above lines. She calls these enclosed items as the “flotsam and jetsam of our civilisation” i.e. when referring to these things she is treating them as the wreckage that is left of our civilization—the few of the only good things that have survived in our civilization. She hopes that the Inhibitor likes them and says that there are lots of things in the modern day world that we could have lived without. This might be an ironical reference to the crimes, futility of wars, or anything and everything that is a burden to Modern Society. She advises the descendants not to build any Gods which hints that the poet is visibly frustrated of all the communal tensions that arise with the word “Religion”. She hopes that the Earth is nearly clean again, refueled with its natural beauty by the time this time capsule is opened, but after all that she has said above, we sincerely doubt that her hope is rather a heartless one, devoid of any substance. She further goes on to say that if at all it rains, the Inhibitor should sow the lilac seeds in damp soil, and if at all they grow and flower, and if he can, then he should smell them after rain. The repeated use of the word “if” amply shows the amount of doubt that is there in her mind, as she even doubts whether at all there will be rain, or the soil would be fertile enough, or even the Inhibitor would be able to smell or not!

“Package for a Distant Future” is filled with irony, and puns. 
Sylvia Kantaris has beautifully evaded what she actually wants to say in the poem, yet she has given ample hints for us to find it out.