Work Poems

I Hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics- each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
...

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
...

Hey diddle diddle
We're all on the fiddle
And never get up until noon.
We only take cash
...

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
          I am the grass; I cover all.
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Looking at the grinding stones, Kabir laments
In the duel of wheels, nothing stays intact.
...

When people aren't asking questions
They're making suggestions
And when they're not doing one of those
They're either looking over your shoulder or stepping on your toes
...

Let me but do my work from day to day,
In field or forest, at the desk or loom,
In roaring market-place or tranquil room;
Let me but find it in my heart to say,
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When Earth's last picture is painted
And the tubes are twisted and dried
When the oldest colors have faded
And the youngest critic has died
...

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
...

THE moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:
The moon is within me, and so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me; but my deaf ears cannot hear it.
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(This is a small poem written years back for my daughter, when she was still a kid.)

'Why Sunday? '
My daughter asked.
...

A man risked his life to write the words.
A man hung upside down (an idiot friend
holding his legs?) with spray paint
to write the words on a girder fifty feet above
...

Although I work, and seldom cease,
At Dumas pere and Dumas fils,
Alas, I cannot make me care
...

Prelude to "Stalky & Co."


"Let us now praise famous men"--
...