Pitiless Rows of Wheat Around the World
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The clouds aloof they
Toil on in paddies under
The Southern Mountains.
~ Shiki, Englished and reconceived by Phillip Whidden
The blood that never makes a war but plants
Maize, seeds, grain seedlings and vast rows of rice
Is thick like mud and more like blood in ants.
It never writes an opera. More like mice
It propagates itself outside of notes
Of symphonies, outside the gilded frames
Of Raphael. It might make fishing boats
And birch canoes. It never sketches aims
Like Leonardo’s dreams of leveraged flight
Machines. This blood is practical and shrewd
Outside the Babylons. It has no sight
In Plato’s cave. Blood rituals are crude.
The sex in caves and hovels makes the birth
Of sons and wives for tilling of the earth.
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