Sam Muller

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The Best Poem Of Sam Muller

Genocide

The company making weedicide
And the Minister of Agriculture
Met
And discovered they were kindred souls.
Money changed hands, small cheques with gigantic numbers.
And ships arrived bearing vats marked 'poison'
And 'handle with care'

The ministry had many training programmes.
To teach farmers how to poison the land
Without poisoning themselves.
(At least not immediately; that would have been bad for the image)
It was a huge success.

Newspapers wrote stories, academics compiled papers, politicians made speeches.
The minister, a portly self satisfied man, went on a holiday
To recuperate from his labours
To a far away destination, exotically foreign with snow-capped mountain, sky-blue lakes and flower-strewn meadows.
Travelling there in the company's plane,
Sipping champagne, he listened to a young expert
In platinum rimmed glasses and a Hermes tie,
Holding forth about the glorious global campaign against paddy-killing weeds
On the giant TV screen,
In the beige and gold lounge
Of the private plane
Which flew
Exclusively for him.

Down below and far away,
In the land he left behind,
The weeds died
The green leaves shriveled
The tiny flowers vanished.
The parrots never came back, nor the honey bees, nor bright beetles.
Or the kingfishers, because there were no fish.
They had died too, with the weeds, and the insects.

The fields gleamed in the punishing tropical sun
A brittle green carpet
Like the miniature lawn
Of a memorial park
For the dead.

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