A Work of Artifice
Marge Piercy
(b. 1936)
The bonsai tree
in the attractive pot
could have grown eighty feet tall
on the side of a mountain
till split by lightning.
But a gardener
carefully pruned it.
It is nine inches high.
Every day as he
whittles back the branches
the gardener croons,
It is your nature
to be small and cozy,
domestic and weak;
how lucky, little tree,
to have a pot to grow in.
With living creatures
one must begin very early
to dwarf their growth:
the bound feet,
the crippled brain,
the hair in curlers
the hands you
love to touch.
There are a lot of directions that this poem could go in... primarily having to do with the fact that the tree has been altered from the beginning. In a physical sense, it speaks to the physical alteration of things from an early age- chinese women used to bind their feet at a young age so that they would never grow and therefore they would be hobbled for life with small and dainty feet. The tree must be cared for from a very young age in order to keep it dwarfed and small- but it goes beyond this. The crippled brain- if one is brought up in a family that imposes very hateful ideas, the person will grow up with these ideas. If a person grows up in a family imposing very loving ideas, the person will generally have these ideas. One must start at an early age to alter something or cripple something. I don't understand the last line- "the hands you love to touch".
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1 comment:
I did the same poem. I agree with you that starting to 'brainwash' people's minds into believing wrong things is easier when you start young, because young children are more malleable, but the opposite is true as well. It's easier to teach someone something than to uneach them that. And I don't really get the last two lines either.
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