Distrust (edit2, title chg)

[dukealien]

Edit2;

Distrust


Black clouds no less than white or pink,
Beijing sienna, sandstorm-brown,
can block the light of Heaven:
trust no race.

Edit1;

Race

Black clouds no less than white or pink,
Beijing sienna, sandstorm-brown,
can block the light of Heaven.

original;

Impediments


Black clouds no less than white or gray,
Beijing sienna, sandstorm brown,
can hide the light of Heaven. So,

place not your trust in race.

For a simple metaphor, this seems over-elaborated.  But

Black clouds no less than white or gray
can block the light of Heaven.

needs at least a pointer toward the analogy, doesn't it?

(And the inversion... but is it always wrong to echo the KJV?)

[Achebe]

The last line is too didactic, otherwise readable.

[Mahjong]

This is lovely, dukealien.

"[N]o less than" is correct, but in another sense 'less' means 'more' with regard to hiding/blocking...so there's something else in the logic of it--maybe some sense that 'white or gray clouds [hide/block] no less than black' might make 'more' sense--but then I'm still jet lagged (and I've another 7-hour flight in a few hours)...

"Beijing sienna, sandstorm brown"--nice!  I've weathered a couple serious Beijing sandstorms, sienna indeed (though I believe the 'sand' is connected to the historically/poetically significant loess soil, which the Chinese call 'yellow earth').  More recently, however, the dark cloud in which Beijing is daily cloaked (to one color-monitored degree or another--there was a 'red alert' around 10 days ago) is a highly toxic one produced by automobile and factory emissions.  I do find this ineluctably current image, which almost daily peppers Chinese and international media, a bit of a distraction in trying to embrace your more poetic one, but the required slippage from toxic dust to Beijing sienna, even if 'environmentally incorrect', certainly brings back misty memories for me.

Thanks for posting!

[RiverNotch]

"Beijing sienna, sandstorm brown" evokes enough for me that image of race, while that last line really reads unnecessary. Maybe change gray to a more fleshly color?

[dukealien]

Edit1;

Race

Black clouds no less than white or pink,
Beijing sienna, sandstorm-brown,
can block the light of Heaven.

---

Thanks to all the critics, very good advice which I've applied in this edit (though I couldn't quite shake out the urge to give a hint as to the subject in mind - see below - but the original title was vapid anyway).

@RiverNotch - Good 1, we don't think of pink clouds as opaque, but they are - just lit from below, sometimes by a sun that's already set or about to rise (and a variant of white).

@Mahjong - The "no less than" construction is a bit archaic and convoluted, true.  It was meant

as an over-the-shoulder slingshot at the now almost-gone US president and the undeserved halo he received solely for the (approximate) color of his skin... and probably still will be, despite his now-proven comprehensive vileness.

"[S]andstorm brown" is intended to bring in the desert (Semitic/Arab) peoples as also capable of blocking Heaven's light individually, perhaps it should be on its own line to prevent the association you made.

@everyone - Does the message still get through without the fourth line?  It seems to me that without some hint at context it fails to bite, like the famous Meiji/Showa

Methinks all the people of the world are brethren, then. Why are the waves and the wind so unsettled nowadays?

[Lizzie]

I miss the last line, sorry.  The poem does pack more of a punch with that 'moralism' included.

[Achebe]

@everyone - Does the message still get through without the fourth line?  It seems to me that without some hint at context it fails to bite, like the famous Meiji/Showa

The association was obvious, but doesn't make for interesting  poetry.
Edited, it is less didactic, but still a statement of boring  opinion or prejudice. The old show / tell tgibg.

[dukealien]

Edit2;

Distrust


Black clouds no less than white or pink,
Beijing sienna, sandstorm-brown,
can block the light of Heaven:
trust no race.

---

Thanks to @lizziep and @achebe (again).  Another attempt at rebalancing message ("If you want ot send a ... , call Western Union") versus poetic merit.