SANDALWOOD, you say, and in your thoughts it chimes <br />With Tyre and Solomon; to me it rhymes <br />With places bare upon Pacific mountains, <br />With spaces empty in the minds of men. <br /> <br />Sandalwood! <br />The Kings of Hawaii call out their men, <br />The men go up the mountains in files; <br />Hands that knew only the stone axe now wield the iron axe: <br />The sandalwood trees go down. <br /> <br />More sandalwood is called for: <br />The men who hunt the whale will buy sandalwood; <br />The Kings would change canoes for ships. <br />Men come down from the mountains carrying sandalwood on their backs; <br />More and more men are levied; <br />They go up the mountains in files; they leave their taropatches so that famine comes down on the land. <br /> <br />But this sandalwood grows upon other trees, a parasite; <br />It needs a growing thing to grow upon; <br />Its seed and its soil are not enough for it! <br /> <br />Too greedy are the Kings; <br />Too eager are the men who hunt the whale to sail to <br />Canton with fragrant wood to make shrines for the <br />Buddhas; <br />Too sharp is the iron axe! <br /> <br />Nothing will ever bring together again <br />The spores and the alien sap that nourished them, <br />The trees and the trees they would plant themselves <br />upon: <br />Like the myths of peoples, <br />Like the faiths of peoples, <br />Like the speech of peoples, <br />Like the ancient creation chants, <br />The sandalwood is gone! <br /> <br />A fragrance in shrines <br />But the trees will never live again!<br /><br />Padraic Colum<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hawaiian/
