The middle door, made of steel, glitters with ice crystals. The lock, too, is encrusted in frost. This is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
— from Thunder & Lightning (Weather Past, Present, Future) by Lauren Redniss (page 18)
First Seed Stirs
Four-ply foil bags, packed tight as rain, inside boxes, this vault contains the sealed-up seeds
of pig-weed, goose-grass, chickpea, Job's Tears, radish, yellow-rocket, mahogany, lentil, cumin, clover, flax, chicory, pear, watermelon, basil, mint, blackberry, corn -
plus thousands more sleep down there, plucked from dirt of this Earth, all stored at zero degrees, five hundred feet in sandstone for a future turned by climate, or war, or something more
These lands need rebirth; the first seed, planted, stirs
Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH0IRaAiy1Y