Cucumber fields crossed by high-tension wires [poem 2]

The high-tension spires spike the sky
beneath which boys bend
to pick from prickly vines
the deep-sopped fruit, the rind's green
a green sunk
in green. They part the plants' leaves,
reach into the nest,
and pull out mother, father, fat Uncle Phil.
The smaller yellow-green children stay,
for now the fruit goes
in baskets by the side of the row,
every thirty feet or so. By these bushels
the boys get paid, in cash,
at day's end, this summer
of the last days of the empire
that will become known as
the past, adios, then,
the ragged-edged beautiful blink.

Comment:-

We assume it to be an agrarian scene at first. It is made so dense and surreal by Lux’s painterly descriptions, but there is something subtler, deadlier underneath. This poem for me addresses invading armies, although disguised in fruity metaphor. Overwhelming forces invade homes, destroy homelands, cart off citizens and vital resources, and then are gone when use is exhausted , in a blink. This poem uses metaphorical devices to delineate how the nations and electoral will distance themselves for the real damage their country inflicts for some greater, glorious good. Suffering discounted and blood on one’s finger tips. This is a provocative poem from Lux.

Lux is extremely skilled when it comes to his language. Of all the poets with a realist bent, Lux I think is the one who is truly subversive of his own and, by extension, his reader's assumptions of the world. It is a neat and meaningful leap for him. You smile, indeed, you chuckle, when you get the joke and wonder how on earth he came up with this unexpected yet fruitful turn, and then there is the additional, delayed realization that what Lux has offered up is a brief and cutting critique. Lux’s skills make the reader read the poems numerous times to decipher the message hidden underneath. A highbrowed way of writing, must say.