To Be of Use, Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
Jump into work head first
Without dallying in the shallows
And swim of with sure strokes
Almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
The black sleek heads of seals
Bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves,
An ox to a heavy cart,
Who pull like water buffalo, with
Massive patience,
Who strain in the mud and the
Muck to move things forward,
Who do what has to be done,
Again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
In the task, who go into the
Fields to harvest
And work in a row and pass
The bags along,
Who are not parlor generals
And field deserters
But move in a common rhythm
When the food must come in
Or the fire put out.
The work of the world is
Common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands,
Crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
Has a shape that satisfies,
Clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are
Put in museums
But you know they were made
To be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
And a person for work that is real.
From: winedale-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:winedale-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of katey gilligan
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 12:52 AM
To: alums
Subject: [Winedale-l] Poetry Doc Read to Us in 1994, I Remember Now, Here's for You
LITTLE GIDDING
(No. 4 of 'Four Quartets')
T.S. Eliot
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
--
Katey Gilligan
Masters in Science
Technology Commercialization
Red McCombs School of Business
The University of Texas at Austin
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