Am meisten gelesen ▸
Anna Wickham
What was not done on earth by incapacity
Of old, was promised for the life to be.
But I will build a heaven which shall prove
A lovelier paradise
To your brave mortal eyes
Than the eternal tranquil promise of the Good.
For freedom I will give perfected love,
For which you shall not pay in shelter or in food.
For the work of my head and hands I will be paid,
But I take no fee to be wedded, or to remain a maid.
out of work
they break up
all the vehemence and rhetoric
of wind in the night
in the park
they lease new buildings
where the morning grew
they do all the hurt they can
the more a man serves
the less he finds of joy
like the death of so many things
to make me content in my life
our work ending
what is time
are hands the new books
after love an account
of my day’s work
where we join our hips
to the company of sleep
off a little
the past I always have
at work in a factory
a death made
of dirt and prison stone
made from hour to hour
till it was midnight
made drunk
made of work
like a heavy-headed ox
whole but odd
the badness
of our good morning
her long stories out of nothing
an unkind mind
to put in order
but not because of owning it
talking in the room of being
and every part of work
proving a plague
a blank
for me to fill
is a great venture to venture
my service my brother my wife my God
my profits my money my chest my life
my sleep
I’ve been so swamped, I took
a mental health day, called in sick.
My poems are dwindling like unused
extra fingers. But the signs
weren’t good: first the car
that wouldn’t start, then no heat
in the apartment. And in between
the therapist saying you have to learn
to let go. Hell, I barely made it
to the appointment. How can I relax
when my mechanic charges twice
as much as my therapist? I ask
the radiator repairman, can’t you fix it
so it doesn’t knock?
I need things to be simpler than they are.
Today my car still isn’t running
I walk the dog
my mind full of work
by a river full of ice
dark lodgings
a board with my name on it
out on the farm we see
the weight of the present
take pains to deserve
a bit of rain
green as the sea
having spent hours killing