102 Work poems

Carpenters whose wives have run off Are sometimes discovered weeping on the job. But even then they don’t complain of their work. Whitman’s father was a carpenter. He was so happy hammering houses That he jumped with a shout from the roof beam And rolled with a yawp in the timothy. This led his son to conclude wrongly That all workmen are singers. Whitman’s father was weak. He had trouble holding a job. He hoped that the house he was working on Would be lived in by a man more steady Than he was, who would earn his sleep, Dreaming easy under a sound roof With no rain in his face. Of course, there are bad carpenters everywhere. They don’t care if the walls don’t meet. “After all,” they argue, “We’re not building airplanes.” But Whitman’s father measured his nails. Many mornings, clacking his plane, He crooned a song to the corners, Urging them on to a snug fit. No needles of heat will escape through a crack If he can help it, no threads of light.

It hides its edges in speed, it has no edges. Plus every time he thinks he knows it close enough, can discriminate centripetal force from what gets sheared straight off, direction changes: through stunned space the blade snaps back, turtles into its handle and starts over spinning the other way. All along the chopped-up sidewalk (the need to keep breaking what we make to keep making) the concrete saw plunges and resurfaces, precise as a skull; it glints against the small smoke of its own work.

Next to the screen door work boots dry in the sun. Salt lines map the leather and laces droop like the arms of a new-hire waiting to punch out. The shoe hangs open like the sigh of someone too tired to speak a mouth that can almost breathe. A tear in the leather reveals a shiny steel toe a glimpse of the promise of safety the promise of steel and the years to come.

This fastening, unfastening, and heaving— this is our life. Whose life is it improving? It topples some. Some others it will toughen. Work is the safest way to fail, and often the simplest way to love a son or daughter. We come. We carp. We’re fired. We worry later. That man is strange. His calipers are shiny. His hands are black. For lunch he brings baloney, and, offered coffee, answers, “Thank you, no.” That man, with nothing evil left to do and two small skills to stir some interest up, fits in the curtained corner of a shop. The best part of our life is disappearing into the john to sneak a smoke, or staring at screaming non-stop mills, our eyes unfocused, or standing judging whose sick joke is sickest. Yet nothing you could do could break our silence. We are a check. Do not expect a balance. That is a wrathful man becoming older, a nobody like us, turned mortgage holder. We stay until the bell. That man will stay ten minutes more, so no one can complain. Each day, by then, he’s done exactly ten. Ten what, exactly, no one here can say.

Lines Composed 21st February 1825 All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair— The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing— And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow, Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow. Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may, For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away! With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll: And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul? Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live.

Do you have adequate oxen for the job? No, my oxen are inadequate. Well, how many oxen would it take to do an adequate job? I would need ten more oxen to do the job adequately. I'll see if I can get them for you. I'd be obliged if you could do that for me. Certainly. And do you have sufficient fishcakes for the men? We have fifty fishcakes, which is less than sufficient. I'll have them delivered on the morrow. Do you need maps of the mountains and the underworld? We have maps of the mountains but we lack maps of the underworld. Of course you lack maps of the underworld, there are no maps of the underworld. And, besides, you don't want to go there, it's stuffy. I had no intention of going there, or anywhere for that matter. It's just that you asked me if I needed maps. . . . Yes, yes, it's my fault, I got carried away. What do you need, then, you tell me? We need seeds, we need plows, we need scythes, chickens, pigs, cows, buckets and women. Women? We have no women. You're a sorry lot, then. We are a sorry lot, sir. Well, I can't get you women. I assumed as much, sir. What are you going to do without women, then? We will suffer, sir. And then we'll die out one by one. Can any of you sing? Yes, sir, we have many fine singers among us. Order them to begin singing immediately. Either women will find you this way or you will die comforted. Meanwhile busy yourselves with the meaningful tasks you have set for yourselves. Sir, we will not rest until the babes arrive.

We stand in the rain in a long line waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is—if you’re old enough to read this you know what work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, shifting from one foot to another. Feeling the light rain falling like mist into your hair, blurring your vision until you think you see your own brother ahead of you, maybe ten places. You rub your glasses with your fingers, and of course it’s someone else’s brother, narrower across the shoulders than yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin that does not hide the stubbornness, the sad refusal to give in to rain, to the hours of wasted waiting, to the knowledge that somewhere ahead a man is waiting who will say, “No, we’re not hiring today,” for any reason he wants. You love your brother, now suddenly you can hardly stand the love flooding you for your brother, who’s not beside you or behind or ahead because he’s home trying to sleep off a miserable night shift at Cadillac so he can get up before noon to study his German. Works eight hours a night so he can sing Wagner, the opera you hate most, the worst music ever invented. How long has it been since you told him you loved him, held his wide shoulders, opened your eyes wide and said those words, and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never done something so simple, so obvious, not because you’re too young or too dumb, not because you’re jealous or even mean or incapable of crying in the presence of another man, no, just because you don’t know what work is.

At sixteen, I worked after high school hours at a printing plant that manufactured legal pads: Yellow paper stacked seven feet high and leaning as I slipped cardboard between the pages, then brushed red glue up and down the stack. No gloves: fingertips required for the perfection of paper, smoothing the exact rectangle. Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands would slide along suddenly sharp paper, and gather slits thinner than the crevices of the skin, hidden. Then the glue would sting, hands oozing till both palms burned at the punchclock. Ten years later, in law school, I knew that every legal pad was glued with the sting of hidden cuts, that every open lawbook was a pair of hands upturned and burning.

(for John Barrell) 1.gone to lunch back in five minutes night closed in on my letter of resignation out in the square one of my threads had broken loose the language i used was no and no while the yellow still came through, the hammer and the drills occasionally the metabolism alters and lines no longer come express waiting for you what muscles work me which hold me down below my head? it is a long coat and a van on the horizon a bird that vanishes    the arabic i learn from observation is how to break the line (genius creates surprises : the metropolitan police band singing ‘bless this house’ as the filmed extractor fans inflate the house with steam 2.walking my back home the wind is the wind is a no-vo-cain band and the footstep echoes i have conjured peo ple 3.ah, it all falls into place when it was time what he had left became a tile bodies held shaped by the pressure of air were clipped to his attention by their gestures my but we do have powerful muscles each of us equal to gravity or sunlight that forces our shadows into the pieces of a fully interlocking puzzle 4.good morning he whispered the horrors of the horses are the crows the bird flies past the outside the library many heels have trapped the same way he tolls, he lapsed with the light from so many trees check the pattern swerves with the back the tree that holds the metal spiral staircase swings aloft the hand removes a book and checked it for death by glasses or the angle food descends 5.the broadcast she turns me on she turns on me that the view from the window is a lake and silent cars are given the noise of flies dying in the heat of the library    the grass outside goes brown in my head behind my glasses behind the glass in the precinct thus, too, they whisper in museums and banks

' Life passes through places.' –P.J. Duffy, Landscapes of South Ulster Patrick Farrell, of Lackagh, who was able to mow one acre and one rood Irish in a day. Tom Gallagher, Cornamucklagh, could walk 50 Irish miles in one day. Patrick Mulligan, Cremartin, was a great oarsman. Tommy Atkinson, Lismagunshin, was very good at highjumping—he could jump six feet high. John Duffy, Corley, was able to dig half an Irish acre in one day. Edward Monaghan, Annagh, who could stand on his head on a pint tumbler or on the rigging of a house. –1938 folklore survey to record the local people who occupied the South Ulster parish landscape. * * * Kathleen McKenna, Annagola, who was able to wash a week’s sheets, shirts and swaddling, bake bread and clean the house all of a Monday. Birdy McMahon, of Faulkland, walked to Monaghan for a sack of flour two days before her eighth child was born. Cepta Duffy, Glennan, very good at sewing—embroidered a set of vestments in five days. Mary McCabe, of Derrynashallog, who cared for her husband’s mother in dotage, fed ten children, the youngest still at the breast during hay-making. Mary Conlon, Tullyree, who wrote poems at night. Assumpta Meehan, Tonygarvey, saw many visions and was committed to the asylum. Martha McGinn, of Emy, who swam Cornamunden Lough in one hour and a quarter. Marita McHugh, Foxhole, whose sponge cakes won First Prize at Cloncaw Show. Miss Harper, Corley, female problems rarely ceased, pleasant in ill-health. Patricia Curley, Corlatt, whose joints ached and swelled though she was young, who bore three children. Dora Heuston, Strananny, died in childbirth, aged 14 years, last words ‘Mammy, O Mammy!’ Rosie McCrudden, Aghabog noted for clean boots, winter or summer, often beaten by her father. Maggie Traynor, Donagh, got no breakfasts, fed by the nuns, batch loaf with jam, the best speller in the school. Phyllis McCrudden, Knockaphubble, who buried two husbands, reared five children, and farmed her own land. Ann Moffett, of Enagh, who taught people to read and did not charge.