It moves without us

"Don't write about man, write about a man."

-E.B. White

They build, we build
out of straw, stone, and soon
plastic and space metals.
They thrive, we live on
the backs of women, then
of slaves, and now for
wage slavery. They fight,
we war for meager crops
and hollowed-out, crusted
loaves of hard bread. Still,
their pain is our pain, the
opposition, the others,
those with better grass
and short brick fences, those
with rifles and we with arrows
or knives, those with clean
water or those in drought,
the sun burning their faces
lined with years of squinting,
staring into the distance.

The fields are level, but saying this
to a man born on a mountain
and one born in those fields, well...

Can anyone say the man from
the lowlands can't feel the
earth beneath his bare feet, and
know that it moves without him?