Kostaki's Harvest Woes, by Angela Costi

Agriculteur Dans un Champ, by Vincent van Gogh (Netherlands) 1885

Kostaki's Harvest Woes 

The soil here bleeds too
The land buries itself in your nails 
It wants to teach you about the first people and their culture
But we don’t listen with our pellets and ‘Blood and Bone’
We bring the tools of toil for another soil with its stored memories 
The shovel hurts the spirits who are the true keepers of the weather
The garlic is hollow, the zucchinis are small, the tomatoes won’t grow.
 
Each day you visit the garden like the migrant you are
You offer excuses of being fed propaganda before you arrived 
The garden digs deep and yields food you won’t stomach 
You take off your gloves and plant your fingers to feel the pain
White soap washes the dirt, minerals, the remnants of rock.
The red iron bark will grow stronger than your lemon tree
It will tower over your house and give you permission to stay. 

Angela Costi

Angela Costi is an Australian-based author of four poetry collections including Honey and Salt (Five Islands Press, 2007) and Lost in Mid-Verse (Owl Publishing, 2014). An award from the National Languages Board in 1995 enabled her to study Ancient Greek drama in Greece. She received funding from the Australia Council to work in Japan on an international collaboration involving her poetry. 
Recent funding from City of Melbourne is enabling her to document parts of her current poetry manuscript titled: An Embroidery of Old Maps and New. She manages 'Angela Costi Poetics' - a FaceBook page dedicated to reflecting on the poetry writing process.