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\ --

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