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Machine Pastoral
"With each advent of spring, when the air is alive with innumerable
happy creatures; when the storks on their arrival at their old northern
resorts fold up the imposing flying apparatus which has carried them
thousands of miles, lay back their heads and announce their arrival by
joyously rattling their beaks; when the swallows have made their entry
and hurry through our streets and pass our windows in sailing flight;
when the lark appears as a dot in the ether and manifests its joy of
existence by its song; then a certain desire takes possession of man. He
longs to soar upward and to glide, free as the bird, over smiling
fields, leafy woods and mirror-like lakes, and so enjoy the varying
landscape as fully as only a bird can do."
--Otto Lilienthal, "Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation"
Birdship sing
our want. Beasts of the
sea tongue
our dry stone's skip of land. We have beat you
steel gorgons to break borders
negotiated in the palor
of our tender skin. Human,
would you own
freedom in tarnished metal,
bleed power from bodies
blessed with flight?
"twenty times
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan -
When, from behind that rocky steep (till then
The bound of the horizon), a huge cliff
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Upreared its head."
The jungle bares yellow teeth.
The lion and cheetah clutch loose earth
soldered to the dark kingdom.
Silver glints in the eye, polished by hands
manicured white. The tongue
tastes of metal. The hands have held
cheetah haunch as an engine. The body
has burned the whale road in the steel
stomach of a false god. A god like a bullet.
There is ________ we have not known.
"Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe."
You cannot swim far or fly free.
You know only
animal lust and the impulse to revenge.
Bigot, you have chased your
monsters, yet one
chases still. She is holding
open heavy pages
which bear the prophecy of
the One God. O. G.
At dinner, Cole asked,
"What is it about
humans that makes them want
to build a bomb? How did it
happen? The shape. The
explosion. What is it?"
I said
there was a bullet
in the Civil War
that exploded
on impact. Accident.
There is an animal
which flies through the air,
suicidal,
bent on destruction.
There are fields
where men were killed, where
geese graze in grass
scattered with a century
of bullets.
The sun shines there as it does
on asphalt.
It is great. The sun is a great god.
Ra, your beak
can spike the land.
It mocks you. It calls to you
for vengeance. It has been waiting for another
beast to tame
into ignorant metal.
The great cliff
hangs above our heads.
We are crouching in its shadow. We have waited long enough.
-Heather Pollock, © 2003
:: posted by buermann @ 2003-04-01 05:15:28 CST |
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