Vendor of Green Coconuts

Day after day, barelegged in the plaza, 
He squats by his coconuts, a jade-green mound, 
Hacking the husks with a gleaming machete,
Tossing jade and ivory chips to the ground. 

Youth has slipped by him—he has not missed it. 
With monotonous gesture and eyes half asleep,
He is only aware of the shining fragments, 
And nuts piling up in a shaggy brown heap. 

A world has been gutted by fire and disaster, 
Nations wasted to ashes, the while he has been 
Year after year, hacking and chopping 
Dusky nuts from their sheaths of ivory and green.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on August 31, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“Vendor of Green Coconuts” appeared in Muna Lee’s poetry collection Sea-Change (The Macmillan Company, 1923).