The Daily Ant has launched “Formicid Form“, a Sunday ant poetry series. When possible, our new Verse Correspondant, Natalia Piland, will provide a short commentary at the end of each poem. Enjoy!
A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto (1943)
By Czesław Miłosz, recipient of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Bees build around red liver,
Ants build around black bone.
It has begun: the tearing, the trampling on silks,
It has begun: the breaking of glass, wood, copper, nickel, silver, foam
Of gypsum, iron sheets, violin strings, trumpets, leaves, balls, crystals.
Poof! Phosphorescent fire from yellow walls
Engulfs animal and human hair.