After the first revolution
the poets were busier than
cabbage moths in the garden.
They praised the new nation,
the rice paddies, the rumps of the peasants
raised skyward as they planted,
the new children who would grow up to be literate,
have electricity, running water,
almost enough to eat.
They praised the factories
that belonged to everyone,
the bolts of black cloth
and the shimmering orange tractors
that ran like heavy-footed dragons over the earth.
After the counterrevolution
the poets were excommunicated.
They were farmed out as swineherds.
They cleaned privies.
They swept the aisles of factories.
They learned to make light bulbs and fertilizers
and little by little they mastered
the gray art of ambiguity.
Out of the long and complex grasses
of their feelings they learned
to plait meanings into metaphor.
It was heavy weather.
After the next revolution
it rained melancholy, it is still raining
in the poets’ garden. But they are planting
and busy white moths flutter
at random along the orderly rows,
a trillion eggs in their ovipositors
waiting to hatch into green loopers
with fearsome jaws.
Leave a Reply