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Steep tracts of dry earth occasionally perplexed by roots

Proceed up the aisles of perpendicular cathedrals.

Bundled pillars of bamboo admit onto chapels of

The unkempt wild banana, larger than a mammoth by

Comparison to its pip-less and domesticated

Cousins. Blanched husks, both Saxon and Norman,

Vie with massive leaves for light’s attention.

Greenly broken leaves get repaired here

With a maze of golden seams as you get in Fittonia.

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Lancet poison dart plants, bambino arrows and

A foliage plant named Bogner spring up under

Fronds raped by liana – which is spiralled by

Its own far younger strings. The rectilinear kapok

Soars up from its buttresses for vertiginous feet,

Breaking into orange powder right at the summit

Underneath the summit just above it: orange

As the domesticated cur seen near roadside stalls

Coloured the same as the feral dohle that terrorise

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The hinds and their fawns at the wallow. It’s tricky for

Plantations here, when wild originals contaminate

The heifer versions of themselves with their rampant

Savagery. Monkeys, birds and insects can’t be taught that

Trespass is an offence. They smuggle in the holy

Spirits of the ancient breeds, just as the powerful cult

Of the child who will do one’s bidding generates

Rows kept without official sanction in the abbot’s audience room.

It’s thus that your banana eunuchs suddenly begin

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To procreate. Crops castrated for the market  

Unpeel auspiciously, only to be found with those unpalatable pips

Even the monkeys spit out and elephants shit.

Not quite as bad as the custard apple though

Enough to deter the Western appetite. You have to go

Back to the Bone Age, when there were wolves but

No Alsatians, when the poison arrow plant

Was still distilled for its point, the time of antler tines,

To worship at the waterfall’s chasm-haunted wat.

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                                                     Khun Korn