Far Eastern Vines
Run from the clay banks they are
Supposed to keep from eroding
Up telephone poles
Which rear, half out of leafage
As though they would shriek
Like things smothered by their own
Green, mindless, unkillable ghosts
In Georgia, the legend says
That you must close your windows
At night to keep it out of the house
The glass is tinged with green, even so
As the tendrils crawl over the fields
The night the kudzu has
Your pasture, you sleep like the dead...
Run from the clay banks they are
Supposed to keep from eroding
Up telephone poles
Which rear, half out of leafage
As though they would shriek
Like things smothered by their own
Green, mindless, unkillable ghosts
In Georgia, the legend says
That you must close your windows
At night to keep it out of the house
The glass is tinged with green, even so
As the tendrils crawl over the fields
The night the kudzu has
Your pasture, you sleep like the dead...
Kudzu, by James Dickey 1963
Kudzu. It crawls, blanketing everything in its path as Christo might wrap the countryside. An
undulating wave, forming a dull relief of what lies below, it grows as much as a foot a day in
summer, creating an impenetrable curtain of green leaves.
