Saccharum officinarum

a poem by Roger B Rueda

as the day breaks they are cutting the cane the slave cane

whose nightflowers of rubicund and rosy

are hiding their revelries from rays and view,

that rears over its cutters cracking and whizzing

with the immobilised vigour of a hungry peasantry;

that is a nightmarish crowd of androids, a ferocious

thick inflow of spikes and flapping buntings,

surging recalcitrantly and unable to rush onward,

checked by centuries of slavery that have bred it almost

seedless and sterile, needing man for

each new generation that's grown from the speartips

of those cut and crushed

by cohorts of men who are barely more free:

and where the cleared ground ends

they antagonise each other

the cane that is slave to its planter and cutter,

the cutter near slave to the owner of cane

in the dizzy heat of midday they are cutting the cane

bottles of water and white rum lie in the shade of slashed branches

with white rum and red wrath they are cutting the cane

hewing the thin skeletons for the marrows melodiousness

with cutlasses that live in contempt of bone

the bone of the neighbour who looks at your wife

the bone of your wife who's run back to her mother

the bone of your friend who's been seen with your boyfriend

every livid grievance can be cut out with a cutlass

but not the protest of cutting the cane for a pittance:

both cane and cutter carry leaf blades for the owner

in the calm of the evening they are cutting the cane

the infinite cane, the cane they make infinite,

the cane like themselves, like the arms of the starving,

the sweet cane that leaves an acerbic taste in the mouths of its reapers