Cormorants
--Eunice Tietjens (1884-1944)
The boats of your masters are black;
They are filthy with the slimy filth of ages;
like the canals on which they float they
give forth an evil smell.
On soiled perches you sit, swung out on either
side over the scummy water—you who
should be savage and untamed, who
should ride on the clean breath of the
sea and beat your pinions in the strong
storms of the sea.
Yet you are not held.
Tamely you sit and willingly, ten wretches to
a boat, lurching and half asleep.
Around each throat is a ring of straw, a small
ring, so that you may swallow only small
things, such as your masters desire.
Presently, when you reach the lake, you will
dive.
At the word of your masters the parted
waters will close over you and in your
ears will be the gurgling of yellow streams.
Hungrily you will search in the darkened
void, swiftly you will pounce on the sil-
ver shadow......
Then you will rise again, bearing in your beak
the struggling prey,
And your lousy lords, whose rings are upon
your throats, will take from you the
catch, giving in its place a puny wriggler
which can pass the gates of straw.
Such is your servitude.
Yet willingly you sit, lurching and half asleep.
The boatmen shout one to another in nasal
discords. Lazily you preen your great
wings, eagle wings, built for the sky;
And you yawn......
Faugh! The sight of you sickens me, divers
in inland filth!
You grow lousy like your lords,
For you have forgotten the sea.
Wusih
Eunice Tietjens, Profiles from China: Sketches in Verse of People & Things
Seen in the Interior, Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1917, p.15.
--
http://www.wretch.cc/blog/kamadevas\
--
※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc)
◆ From: 98.206.162.66