Water-Works
July 8 2014


Like small reflecting pools

between shallow berms of earth,

ascending

tightly nested
hugging the slope.
Not cut gems, but softly contoured jewels,
in a garland
of multi-coloured light.

Pin-cushioned
by green shoots of rice.
And tended
by knee-deep peasants

crouching bent,

indistinguishable, in big paddy hats,

all brim

like flattened lampshades.

They are not self-made men
libertarian, American.
Because they were born into this,
and will pass it on, as is
just as their ancestors did.
The generations past
on whose shoulders they stand,
like the low earthen dams, on which they quick-step

nimbly balancing.

Our conceit
is that we owe the past nothing,
boot-strapping ourselves
into future's promised land.
Dizzy
with winner-take-all.

But here, the transformation of nature
to serve man,
this civilized planet
of water-works, rice paddies
make clear
what's owed the past.
And how the many
subsume the one.

It was always thus
in the still air, and slowly lifting mist;
this hillside
of polished glass
glinting in early sun.

 The settled landscape of rice paddies exemplifies a traditional culture of obligation, continuity, community. 

Ours, in contrast, is far more individualistic. Which, like most beliefs based on ideology, is as much smug delusion as truth: we also owe our forbears, and under-estimate our dependence on our contemporaries The rich worship this ideal of the "self-made man"; and I agree, there is much to be said for ambition and risk and initiative. But there is also the luck of birth and circumstance, as well as the shared legacy of infrastructure and rule of law.

The coincidence of two images was behind this poem.

First, there was the same documentary that came up in another recent blurb: Watermark. Edward Burtynsky, the Canadian artist whose panoramic photographs gaze upon the vast scale of manufactured landscapes -- evoking both their unexpected beauty, and their waste -- accomplishes this even better in moving pictures: starting with a tightly composed shot, and then ever so gradually zooming out and out until the impression is overwhelming. I love the way he challenges our expectations by shifting between the micro and the macro; between the human scale and the monolithic. One subject of the film was a community of rice paddies somewhere in China. Not the modern China, but the traditional one. And all through it, I had the unsettled feeling that this way of life (and I acknowledge I'm probably romanticizing a way of life that is more hard and subsistence than it is idyllic) would soon be sacrificed to progress.

Second, there was a still photo I saw as part of The National Geographic Traveller Photo Contest 2014 - Part II: an aerial view of rice paddies, where the reflected sun transforms it into multi-coloured jewels, garlanding the slope. It looked like a beautiful mosaic, not a constructed landscape.

Re-reading, I've noticed several references to body parts and human action, and I rather like this muscular through-line. There's hugging, knee-deep, and boot-strapping; as well as standing on shoulders and quick-stepping on earthen dams: which all nicely echo the "Work" of "Water-Works", and perhaps says something about the restorative simplicity of manual labour. (Romanticizing again?!!)

I should add that nowhere in the film was anyone wearing those stereotypical head coverings, the big straw umbrella hats that harken back to feudal peasants (and which I see, now that I've been able to search on-line, sometimes go by the politically incorrect name "coolie hats") . Actually, the main character wore a small straw fedora, dyed a garish fuchsia! But I took the liberty of the out-dated stereotype to emphasize uniformity: that is, the subordination of the individual to the community.

And those reviled adverbs again! Here, I succumbed to "tightly" and "nimbly". If acknowledging my sins confers absolution, then I am duly excused!