10 Ode to Black Earth
Ode to Black Earth
Terra preta, terra preta, even your name is rich and heady!
Black earth, Amazonian earth, charcoal and ash, potsherd and crushed bone, trash and shit, carcass and nitrogen.
Black earth is life from death, black earth is growth from decay, black earth is delicious!
One thousand years changeless, so rare and so precious, to sink in you is to worship and luxuriate
To swim in the sun, the black sun, the sun as it is to those without eyes
One thousand years of sun beating on the Indians and watching them die
Beating on their grave mounds and their ash piles
Beating them into their own waste
Beating them into humus, into black earth
Into black earth
I sink!
Terra preta, terra preta, even your name is rich and heady!
Black earth, Amazonian earth, charcoal and ash, potsherd and crushed bone, trash and shit, carcass and nitrogen.
Black earth is life from death, black earth is growth from decay, black earth is delicious!
One thousand years changeless, so rare and so precious, to sink in you is to worship and luxuriate
To swim in the sun, the black sun, the sun as it is to those without eyes
One thousand years of sun beating on the Indians and watching them die
Beating on their grave mounds and their ash piles
Beating them into their own waste
Beating them into humus, into black earth
Into black earth
I sink!