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.