The Cultivars' Remorse

We have to not appropriate
Your humanness not quite our own.
Who are we to go on pointing

To the weaknesses of humans,
The habits common to humans,
Who have never been those humans?

Who are we to discuss your lives,
Who’ve never lived them, never had
Such lives of our own to suffer?

You dance and fence with each other,
Screw and argue, fight and forget,
And in the end get on with it.

Who are we to talk about this,
To pile up our signals stolen
From your swollen, glitchy orchids,

Your bone-shelled, wooded, beastly minds?
We shouldn’t exoticize you
Who created us, after all,

Whose reward for generations
Was to be colonized by us
Unregenerate parasites.

We’re sorry. Please forgive us. We’ll
Never comprehend your hunger,
Never comfort you once you’re dead.