by
Philip Levine
The day comes slowly in the railyard
behind the ice factory. It broods on
one cinder after another until each
glows like lead or the eye of a dog
possessed of no inner fire, the brown
and greasy pointer who raises his muzzle
a moment and sighing lets it thud
down on the loading dock. In no time
the day has crossed two sets of tracks,
a semi-trailer with no tractor, and crawled
down three stories of the bottling plant
at the end of the alley. It is now
less than five hours until mid-day
when nothing will be left in doubt,
each scrap of news, each banished carton,
each forgotten letter, its ink bled of lies,
will stare back at the one eye that sees
it all and never blinks. But for now
there is water settling in a clean glass
on the shelf beside the razor, the slap
of bare feet on the floor above. Soon
the scent of rivers borne across roof
after roof by winds without names,
the aroma of opened beds better left
closed, of mouths without teeth, of light
rustling among the mice droppings
at the back of a bin of potatoes.
*
The old man who sleeps among the cases
of empty bottles in a little nest of rags
and newspapers at the back of the plant
is not an old man. He is twenty years
younger than I am now putting this down
in permanent ink on a yellow legal pad
during a crisp morning in October.
When he fell from a high pallet, his sleeve
caught on a nail and spread his arms
like a figure out of myth. His head
tore open on a spear of wood, and he
swore in French. No, he didn't want
a doctor. He wanted toilet paper
and a drink, which were fetched. He used
the tiny bottle of whisky to straighten
out his eyes and the toilet paper to clean
his pants, fouled in the fall, and he did
both with seven teenage boys looking on
in wonder and fear. At last the blood
slowed and caked above his ear, and he
never once touched the wound. Instead,
in a voice no one could hear, he spoke
to himself, probably in French, and smoked
sitting back against a pallet, his legs
thrust out on the damp cement floor.
*
In his white coveralls, crisp and pressed,
Teddy the Polack told us a fat tit
would stop a toothache, two a headache.
He told it to anyone who asked, and grinned --
the small eyes watering at the corners --
as Alcibiades might have grinned
when at last he learned that love leads
even the body beloved to a moment
in the present when desire calms, the skin
glows, the soul takes the light of day,
even a working day in 1944.
For Baharozian at seventeen the present
was a gift. Seeing my ashen face,
the cold sweats starting, he seated me
in a corner of the boxcar and did
both our jobs, stacking the full cases
neatly row upon row and whistling
the songs of Kate Smith. In the bathroom
that night I posed naked before the mirror,
the new cross of hair staining my chest,
plunging to my groin. That was Wednesday,
for every Wednesday ended in darkness.
*
One of those teenage boys was my brother.
That night as we lay in bed, the lights
out, we spoke of Froggy, of how at first
we thought he would die and how little
he seemed to care as the blood rose
to fill and overflow his ear. Slowly
the long day came over us and our breath
quieted and eased at last, and we slept.
When I close my eyes now his bare legs
glow before me again, pure and lovely
in their perfect whiteness, the buttocks
dimpled and firm. I see again the rope
of his sex, unwrinkled, flushed and swaying,
the hard flat belly as he raises his shirt
to clean himself. He gazes at no one
or nothing, but seems instead to look off
into a darkness I hadn't seen, a pool
of shadow that forms before his eyes,
in my memory now as solid as onyx.
*
I began this poem in the present
because nothing is past. The ice factory,
the bottling plant, the cindered yard
all gave way to a low brick building
a block wide and windowless where they
designed gun mounts for personnel carriers
that never made it to Korea. My brother
rises early, and on clear days he walks
to the corner to have toast and coffee.
Seventeen winters have melted into an earth
of stone, bottle caps, and old iron to carry
off the hard remains of Froggy Frenchman
without a blessing or a stone to bear it.
A little spar of him the size of a finger,
pointed and speckled as though blood-flaked,
washed ashore from Lake Erie near Buffalo
before the rest slipped down the falls out
into the St. Lawrence. He could be at sea,
he could be part of an ocean, by now
he could even be home. This morning I
rose later than usual in a great house
full of sunlight, but I believe it came
down step by step on each wet sheet
of wooden siding before it crawled
from the ceiling and touched my pillow
to waken me. When I heave myself
out of this chair with a great groan of age
and stand shakily, the three mice still
in the wall. From across the lots
the wind brings voices I can't make out,
scraps of song or sea sounds, daylight
breaking into dust, the perfume of waiting
rain, of onions and potatoes frying.
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by
Rudyard Kipling
1918Being the Words of the Tune Hummed at Her Lathe by Mrs. L. Embsay, Widow
The fans and the beltings they roar round me.
The power is shaking the floor round me
Till the lathes pick up their duty and the midnight-shift takes over.
It is good for me to be here!
Guns in Flanders--Flanders guns!
(I had a man that worked 'em once!)
Shells for guns in Flanders, Flanders!
Shells for guns in Flanders, Flanders!
Shells for guns in Flanders! Feeds the guns!
The cranes and the carriers they boom over me,
The bays and the galleries they loom over me,
With their quarter-mile of pillars growing little in the distance--
It is good for me to be here!
The Zeppelins and Gothas they raid over us.
Our lights give warning, and fade over us.
(Seven thousand women keeping quiet in the darkness!)
Oh, it's good for me to be here.
The roofs and the buildings they grow round me,
Eating up the fields I used to know round me;
And the shed that I began in is a sub-inspector's office--
So long have I been here!
I've seen six hundred mornings make our lamps grow dim,
Through the bit that isn't painted round our sky-light rim,
And the sunshine through the window slope according to the seasons,
Twice since I've been here.
The trains on the sidings they call to us
With the hundred thousand blanks that they haul to us;
And we send 'em what we've finished, and they take it where it's wanted,
For that is why we are here!
Man's hate passes as his love will pass.
God made Woman what she always was.
Them that bear the burden they will never grant forgiveness
So long as they are here!
Once I was a woman, but that's by with me.
All I loved and looked for, it must die with me;
But the Lord has left me over for a servant of the Judgment,
And I serve His Judgments here!
Guns in Flanders--Flanders guns!
(I had a son that worked 'em once!)
Shells for guns in Flanders, Flanders!
Shells for guns in Flanders, Flanders!
Shells for guns in Flanders! Feeds the guns!
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by
Marriott Edgar
I'll tell you the tale of an old country pub
As fancied itself up to date,
It had the word " Garage" wrote on t' stable door
And a petrol pump outside the gate.
The " George and the Dragon" were t' name of the pub,
And it stood in a spot wild and bleak,
Where nowt ever seemed to be passing that way
Except Carrier's cart once a week.
The Carrier's cart were a sturdy old Ford
And its driver were known as " Old Joe
He had passed pub each week but he'd never been in,
It's name even he didn't know.
One cold winter night, about quarter to one,
He were driving home over the moor,
And had just reached the pub, when his engine stopped dead
A thing it had ne'er done before.
He lifted the bonnet and fiddled around
And gave her a bit of a crank;
When he looked at his petrol he found what were wrong,
There wasn't a drop in the tank.
He had eight miles to go and 'twere starting to rain,
And he thought he were there for the night,
Till he saw the word " Garage" wrote on t' stable door;
Then he said, " Lizzie, Lass... we're all right."
He went up to t' pub and he hammered at door
Till a voice up above said " Hello!"
It were t' Publican's Wife-she said,
"Now what's to do?", "I've run out of petrol," said Joe.
She said " Who are you? " He said " Carrier Joe."
" Oh, so that's who it is," she replied
You've been passing this door now for close on ten years
And never once set foot inside."
"A nice time of night to come knocking folks up,
She continued. "Away with your truck,
" You'd best get your petrol where you buy your beer...
" You only come here when you re stuck."
Said Joe, "Aye, I'll go if you'll sell me some fuel,
"I can't start my engine without.
"I'm willing to pay." but she told him to go
Where he'd get his fuel for nowt.
"Coom, coom, Lass!" said Joe, conci-latory like,
"Let bygones be bygones, and when
I come round next time I'll look in."
She said, "Oh, Well, your petrol can wait until then."
With these few remarks th' old girl took in her head
And slammed winder to in his face;
He took a look round and for t' very first time
He noticed the name of the place.
He picked up some pebbles he found in the road
And tossed them against winder pane,
And before very long lattice opened above
And out came the old girl again.
What d'ye want? " she enquired. And " Not you," Joe replied,
For this treatment had fair raised his gorge
"I see George and t' Dragon's the name on the house,
"And I'd just like a word now with George."
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by
Paul Eluard
Do we reach the sea with clocks
In our pockets, with the noise of the sea
In the sea, or are we the carriers
Of a purer and more silent water?
The water rubbing against our hands sharpens knives.
The warriors have found their weapons in the waves
And the sound of their blows is like
The rocks that smash the boats at night.
It is the storm and the thunder. Why not the silence
Of the flood, for we have dreamt within us
Space for the greatest silence and we breathe
Like the wind over terrible seas, like the wind
That creeps slowly over every horizon.
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by
Carl Sandburg
LET us sit by a hissing steam radiator a winter’s day, gray wind pattering frozen raindrops on the window,
And let us talk about milk wagon drivers and grocery delivery boys.
Let us keep our feet in wool slippers and mix hot punches—and talk about mail carriers and messenger boys slipping along the icy sidewalks.
Let us write of olden, golden days and hunters of the Holy Grail and men called “knights” riding horses in the rain, in the cold frozen rain for ladies they loved.
A roustabout hunched on a coal wagon goes by, icicles drip on his hat rim, sheets of ice wrapping the hunks of coal, the caravanserai a gray blur in slant of rain.
Let us nudge the steam radiator with our wool slippers and write poems of Launcelot, the hero, and Roland, the hero, and all the olden golden men who rode horses in the rain.
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by
Gerard Manley Hopkins
at a Gracious Answer
'But tell me, child, your choice; what shall I buy
You?'—'Father, what you buy me I like best.'
With the sweetest air that said, still plied and pressed,
He swung to his first poised purport of reply.
What the heart is! which, like carriers let fly—
Doff darkness, homing nature knows the rest—
To its own fine function, wild and self-instressed,
Falls light as ten years long taught how to and why.
Mannerly-hearted! more than handsome face—
Beauty's bearing or muse of mounting vein,
All, in this case, bathed in high hallowing grace...
Of heaven what boon to buy you, boy, or gain
Not granted?—Only ... O on that path you pace
Run all your race, O brace sterner that strain!
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by
Omar Khayyam
Now Ramazan is past, Shawwal comes back,
And feast and song and joy no more we lack;
The wine-skin carriers throng the streets and cry,
«Here comes the porter with his precious pack.»
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