Centuries ago, laborers raised tons of stone without the wheel to build Machu Picchu; Pizarro and his army of conquistadores missed it, leaving the stones untouched. Now, hands snap towers,crack walls, wreck temples, stuffing sticky rubble into mouths. Marshmallow Rice Krispie Treat Machu Picchu lies in ruins.
I feel that it is poetry that has led me into political action and not political action which has caused me to write poems.
Behind me the remains
of the cinderblock tabernacle
and behind me the west-leaning house
with a red dirt floor
Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) wrote a number of zuihitsu (literary essays) about his pets, of which “Buncho” (1909) is the most delicately crafted. It is the story of a caged bird that was brought to the writer as a companion in his lonely study, but which in the end died of neglect, despite the initial attention it received.
to the sea
or some lonely pond
or wherever it is
that swans go