Saturday Poem

An axe angles

from my neighbor’s ashcan;

It is hell’s handiwork,

the wood not hickory,

The flow of the grain

not faithfully followed.

The shivered shaft

rises from a shellheap

Of plastic playthings,

paper plates,

And the sheer shards

of shattered tumblers

That were not annealed

for the time needful.

At the same curbside,

a cast-off cabinet

Of wavily warped

unseasoned wood

Waits to be trundled

in the trash-man’s truck.

Haul them off! Hide them!

The heart winces

For junk and gimcrack,

for jerrybuilt things

And the men who make them

for a little money,

Bartering pride

like the bought boxer

Who pulls his punches,

or the paid-off jockey

Who in the home stretch

holds in his horse.

in thoughtless honor

Have kept composure,

like captives who would not

Talk under torture.

Tossed from a tailgate

Where the dump displays

its random dolmens,

Its black barrows

and blazing valleys,

They shall waste in the weather

toward what they were.

The sun shall glory

in the glitter of glass-chips,

Foreseeing the salvage

of the prisoned sand,

And the blistering paint

peel off in patches,

That the good grain

be discovered again.

Then burnt, bulldozed,

they shall all be buried

To the depth of diamonds,

in the making dark

Where halt Hephaestus

keeps his hammer

And Wayland’s work

is worn away.