Patti Smith pens Greta Thunberg a poem for her birthday

There are few places on the Internet more wholesome than Patti Smith's Instagram. Amid grainy photos of coffee, chicken-scratch notes, and works of art are "self-pictures" of Smith, her children and her friends. Captions are always complete with line breaks. Included in this week's fray is a picture of Greta Thunberg, climate activist and Patron Saint of Sassing Donald Trump.

For her seventeenth birthday, the Godmother of punk rock and Earth Mother of the world penned Thunberg a solemn poem:

This is
Greta Thunberg, turning
seventeen today, asking
for no accolade, no gifts,
save we not be neutral.
The Earth knows its kind,
just as all deities, just as
animals and the healing
spring. Happy birthday
to Greta, who stood today,
as every Friday, refusing
to be neutral.

Thunberg has been striking from school every Friday to protest climate change for over a year now. What started as a solo project to implore governments to listen to the science has turned into a global movement about hope and resilience. Thunberg has, at her young age, become the poster child for young people taking action. Smith, of course, is no stranger to wearing that face: the musician, artist and writer became one of the faces that defined a generation of feminists and misfits in the early 1970s.