September 2002
by Saskia Hamilton
You were hired by the tools in the box and set to work.
How to hold a stone. How to throw it.
The project took a long time, you had to
learn to take care.
You were digging underground
and you didn't know where.
Sometimes it was a tunnel
and sometimes it was a stone.
*
The first sign that summer was over was in the fields.
Barley stalks stood up from the earth, which was painted
in a black so thick you would choke if you ate it.
The wind pulled the rose branches and tore them from the wall.
It is time to pack up the house and carry yourself away.
The fields are filling with water.
*
How will you render it, how will you hold it,
how will you bury it and carry on?
There is everything in the world still to do.
You spent so many years trying to find
the end of the day, the close of the shop,
when the work goes back in the box.
He calls work the throat. I call work the chest.
But it is lower than that,
the drawer in the belly,
where the remnants are.
And when you open it, what will you find?
That it was neither the throat nor the chest.
It was the ear that led you this far.
Walk away from Omelas.