The ghost of life: break the grape's joy

If the reports of my colleagues and the posts on infosec Twitter are to be believed, people in quarantine are spending a good amount of time baking bread. This would account for the fact that flour shelves at grocery stores are frequently empty, and if you want to order a 50lb sack of the stuff online, you can expect delivery in late May.

So, for National Poetry Month today, let’s have a poem about bread. We last heard from Dylan Thomas in 2018, so he’s due. Let’s have his “This Bread I Break”.

You can read this on so many levels—literally on the process of what it takes to turn grain into bread and fruit into wine. It’s a commentary on humans pillaging the planet. It’s also an allegory of the sacrifice of Christ.

“This Bread I Break”

This bread I break was once the oat,

This wine upon a foreign tree

Plunged in its fruit;

Man in the day or wine at night

Laid the crops low, broke the grape's joy.

Once in this time wine the summer blood

Knocked in the flesh that decked the vine,

Once in this bread

The oat was merry in the wind;

Man broke the sun, pulled the wind down.

This flesh you break, this blood you let

Make desolation in the vein,

Were oat and grape

Born of the sensual root and sap;

My wine you drink, my bread you snap.

Turns out humans are utter crap at appreciating sacrifice of any sort, whether it’s the chicken they’re frying or the god they worship. And many of them are utter crap at making sacrifices, like staying the fuck at home to protect their health and that of the community.

Of course, many of them are utter crap, period.