Sunday Poem

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republic
D.A. Powell

soon, industry and agriculture converged

                            and the combustion engine

sowed the dirtclod truck farms green

                                          with onion tops and chicory

mowed the hay, fed the swine and mutton

                            through belts and chutes

cleared the blue oak and the chaparral

                                          chipping the wood for mulch

back-filled the marshes

                            replacing buckbean with dent corn

removed the unsavory foliage of quag

                                          made the land into a production

made it produce, pistoned and oiled

                            and forged against its own nature

and—with enterprise—built silos

                                          stockyards, warehouses, processing plants

abattoirs, walk-in refrigerators, canneries, mills

                                                      & centers of distribution

it meant something—in spite of machinery—

                            to say the country, to say apple season

though what it meant was a kind of nose-thumbing

                                                      and a kind of sweetness

                            as when one says how quaint

knowing that a refined listener understands the doubleness

and the leveling of the land, enduing it in sameness, cured malaria

as the standing water in low glades disappeared,

                                                                   as the muskegs drained

typhoid and yellow fever decreased

                                          even milksickness abated

thanks to the rise of the feeding pen

                            cattle no longer grazing on white snakeroot

vanquished:   the germs that bedeviled the rural areas

                                                                   the rural areas also

vanquished:   made monochromatic and mechanized, made suburban

now,

the illnesses we contract are chronic illnesses:   dyspepsia, arthritis

             heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, asthma

                            chronic pain, allergies, anxiety, emphysema

                                          diabetes, cirrhosis, lyme disease, aids

             chronic fatigue syndrome, malnutrition, morbid obesity

hypertension, cancers of the various kinds:   bladder bone eye lymph

                            mouth ovary thyroid liver colon bileduct lung

                                          breast throat & sundry areas of the brain

we are no better in accounting for death, and no worse:     we still die

we carry our uninhabited mortal frames back to the land

                            cover them in sod, we take the land to the brink

             of our dying:   it stands watch, dutifully, artfully

enriched with sewer sludge and urea

                                                      to green against eternity of green

hocus-pocus:   here is a pig in a farrowing crate

                                          eating its own feces

human in its ability to litter inside a cage

                            to nest, to grow gravid and to throw its young

I know I should be mindful of dangerous analogy:

             the pig is only the pig

                            and we aren't merely the wide-open field

                                          flattened to a space resembling nothing

you want me to tell you the marvels of invention?   that we persevere

that the time of flourishing is at hand?   I should like to think it

meanwhile, where have I put the notebook on which I was scribbling

it began like:

                       "the smell of droppings and that narrow country road . . ."