Thistles

Austin Smith

My father would wake early and calmly 

 go about the business of giving himself 

 cancer. Red, the color itself, 

 sloshing（晃动） in the tank behind him, 

 he'd drive the fencerows all morning, 

 spraying thistles. 

 I've always loved thistles 

 for how they hold their beauty 

 apart from us, 

 their purple blossoms 

 more beautiful for being 

 pain's fountaining, 

 like the beauty of the pain of martyrs（烈士，殉道者）. 

 In this way also they are 

 like those rare creatures, 

 mountain lions, owls, you 

 never dream of seeing, much less 

 touching. Which is why 

 he had to kill them 

 from a distance, a spherical mist 

 hanging in the air, a tongueless 

 bell of poison. Because who scythes 

 anymore? I can still see my father 

 unmasked like an actor backstage, 

 breathing as deeply 

 as he ever breathed, 

 while behind him already they were 

 beginning to yellow 

 like old, old annals in a chest 

 of drawers no one opens anymore.