they did a lot of singing.
The cable, the huge singing cable was put in use
& Europe said to America:
Give me three million tons of cotton!
And three million tons of cotton wandered over the ocean
& turned to cloth:
cloth with which one fascinated the savages of Senegambia,
& cotton wads, with which one killed them.
Raise your voice in song, sing
on all the Senegambic trading routes!
sing cotton!
cotton!
Yes, cotton, your descent on the earth like snow!
Your white peace for our dead bodies!
Your white ankle length gowns when we wander into heaven
saved in all the worlds harbours by Booths Jesus-like face.
Cotton, cotton, your snowfall:
wrapping the world in the fur of new necessities,
you shut us in, you blinded our eyes with your cloud.
At the mouth of the Trade River,
& on the wide oceans of markets & fairs,
cotton, we have met there
the laws of your flood,
the threat of your flood.
Harry Edmund Martinson (from the Swedish)
To call this a favourite poem is inaccurate, but it is a salutary reminder that cotton has a terrible history (though Martinson even seems wrong about that, since the cotton trade existed long before the transatlantic cable)
The present day fad for believing that cotton is somehow superior to man made fabrics & ,above all, green infuriates me
The production process is far from benign
It retains water, including sweat, thus making it uncomfortable to wear in hot, humid, close conditions (including inside shoes)
It takes an age to dry – an especially un-green aspect for those who, despite their green credentials, use tumble driers, & is much more difficult to iron than is poly-cotton
I once rather hesitantly expressed my support of poly-cotton to a rather grand old lady – expecting my head to get bitten off by one who demanded linen or Egyptian cotton sheets. ‘Well of course,’ she said, ‘Who would dream of pure cotton sheets these days? To let you into a secret, I even wait to iron mine until they are on the bed’
A really good tip, which grows even more useful as one grows older
Related post: I love radio transmitters
