<snip>
how much blood and ashes of precious things
to manure so rare and brief a growth
I'm sure it's well-intentioned but there is the telling and absolute
disaster at the passage's one attempt at linguistic novelty - 'to manure'.
Oh dear. [DB]
<snip>
But isn't it 'ashes' that's the fulcrum here, not 'manure', the trope being
on 'blood and bone'?
The text is an excerpt from *Brief History*, which is Part II of *New
Nation* (itself published in 1936 as No 11 of *Separate Way*), and marks a
tonal shift:
Wrongs,
like molecules of gas that seep into a house,
explode
in particles of fire!
A captain gallops down the street,
wheels,
and the hoof of his horse
sends the pie plates shining in the sun;
the horse stops
at what is
flowing from the battlefield,
sniffs at it, and will not cross:
this is not water -
it is blood
in a thick and ropy stream.
[...]
On the lawn the Negroes dance
and clap their hands,
So glad! so glad!
Bless the Lord for freedom!
So glad! so glad!
Do not mourn the dandelions...
[etc]
As to 'generalised nature imagery', the dandelion had appeared a few pages
before, in No 3 of *Separate Way*, originally called *Insignificance*:
I will write songs against you,
enemies of my people; I will pelt you
with the winged seeds of the dandelion;
I will marshal against you
the fireflies of the dusk
CW
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