Labor Day

God, I need a job because I need money.
Here the world is, enjoyable with whiskey,
women, ultimate weapons, and class!
But if I have no money, then my wife
gets mad at me, I can’t drink well,
the armed oppress me, and no boss
pays...

He had a back office in his older brother’s
advertising agency and understood the human asshole.
He turned his father’s small inheritance over and over
on hemorrhoid ads between three-hour lunches
at the Plaza every day and cocktails at five-thirty
with different dressy women waiting...

Clean the spittoons, boy.
      Detroit,
      Chicago,
      Atlantic City,
      Palm Beach.
Clean the spittoons.
The steam in hotel kitchens,
And the smoke in hotel lobbies,
And the slime in hotel spittoons:
Part of my life.
      Hey, boy!
      A nickel,
      A dime,
      A dollar,
Two dollars a day.
      Hey, boy!
      A nickel,
      A dime,
      A dollar,
      Two dollars
Buy shoes for the...

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to...

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
      Ere the sorrow comes with years ?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, —
      And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows...

BUSINESS, thou Plague and Pleasure of my Life,
Thou charming Mistress, thou vexatious Wife;
Thou Enemy, thou Friend, to Joy, to Grief,
Thou bring’st me all, and bring’st me no Relief,
Thou bitter, sweet, thou pleasing, teazing Thing,
Thou Bee,...

Don't worry if your job is small,
And your rewards are few.
Remember that the mighty oak,
Was once a nut like you.

When John Henry was a little tiny baby
Sitting on his mama's knee,
He picked up a hammer and a little piece of steel
Saying, "Hammer's going to be the death of me, Lord, Lord,
    Hammer's going to be...

Each day I go into the fieldsto see what is growing
and what remains to be done.
It is always the same thing: nothing
is growing, everything needs to be done.
Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray
till my bones ache and hands rub
blood-raw with honest...

The names of things—sparks!
I ran on them like a component:   
Henries, microhenries, Blue   
Beavers, wee wee ductors:   
Biographer of small lives,
Of a plug and his girl named Jack,   
Of Utopian colonies which worked—
Steel, germanium, brass, aluminum,
Replaceables.
                   Outside, afloat, my words
Swung an arm charting the...

When I was a boy, a relative
Asked for me a job
At the Weeks Cemetery.
Think of all I could
Have raised that summer,
That money, and me
Living at home,
Fattening and getting
Ready to live my life
Out on my knees, humming,
Kneading up docks
And sumac from
Those...

God washes clean the souls and hearts of you,
His favored ones, whose backs bend o’er the soil,
Which grudging gives to them requite for toil
In sober graces and in vision true.
God places in your hands the pow’r to do
A service sweet....

Four-fifty. The palings of Trinity Church
Burying Ground, a few inches above the earth,
are sunk in green light. The low stones
like pale books knocked sideways. The bus so close to the curb
that brush-drops of ebony paint stand out wetly, the sunlight
seethes...

Here at the seashore they use the clouds over & over
again, like the rented animals in Aïda.
In the late morning the land breeze
turns and now the extras are driving
all the white elephants the other way.
What language are these children shouting...

Darkened by time, the masters, like our memories, mix   
And mismatch,
                             and settle about our lawn furniture, like air   
Without a meaning, like air in its clear nothingness.
What can...

And Summer turns her head with its dark tangle   
All the way toward us; and the trees are heavy,   
With little sprays of limp green maple and linden   
Adhering after a rainstorm to the sidewalk   
Where yellow pollen dries in pools and runnels.

Along the...

Sweet smell of phlox drifting across the lawn—
an early warning of the end of summer.
August is fading fast, and by September
the little purple flowers will all be gone.

Season, project, and vacation done.
One more year in everybody’s life.
Add a notch to...

“I want to get away somewhere and re-read Proust,”
Said an editor of Fortune to a man on Time.
But the fire roared and died, the phoenix quacked like a goose,
And all roads to the country fray like shawls
Outside the...