Anne Gordon Perry  

aesthetics, reviewer, arts organizer, poet, dancer, U.S.A.

Anne edits Orison, a journal on the arts.

THE THINNING
I. In my garden, long untended
I spend the morning thinning
rows of half-grown plants:
broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage,
too closely bound together.
Their bodies, tender and resilient,
yield to my insistent pull.
Work now hurried, as the sun creeps higher,
I have no regard for which plants might
be more perfect, might weather well this pruning.
Tossing the unlucky ones aside, with a careless
apology: “Now the others will fare better,”
I ignore the signs of coming maturity.
If they seek survival, I am unaware
and hear no cries as I carry the piles to the refuse heap,
leaving their roots exposed to the withering sun.
Satisfied, and looking back at the preened garden,
I go in and wash the dirt from my hands.

II. In Iran such savagery exists, though plants
are not the victims. Carelessly plucked from life,
it is the Bahá´ís who are thinned and weeded,
raped, humiliated, spit upon, burned:
a doctor here, a mother of four, a peasant.
Their bodies are obeisant, and yield without
complaint to this torture.
If they seek survival, if they ache for their loved ones,
the killers are unaware, and hear no cries as they
carry the bodies to the most convenient place to be dumped,
exposed to the mid-day sun.
Satisfied, the executioners move on, to wash their hands
not of dirt but of blood, proud of their labors.
But they do not know. The others left standing will be
stronger,
Will produce a harvest such as the world has not known.


published in, My Calamity is My Providence, edited by Tahirih Khodadoust Foroughi, U.S.A., 1984.

Arts Dialogue, February 2000, Page 14