On the job somewhere

Simone Weil: the Year of Factory Work (1934-35) - Edward Hirsch

A glass of red wine trembles on the table,
 Untouched, and lamplight falls across her shoulders.

She looks down at the cabbage on her plate,
 She stares at the broken bread. Proposition:

The irreducible slavery of workers. “To work
 In order to eat, to eat in order to work.”

She thinks of the punch clock in her chest,
 Of night deepening in the bindweed and crabgrass,

In the vapors and atoms, in the factory
 Where a steel vise presses against her temples

Ten hours per day. She doesn’t eat.
 She doesn’t sleep. She almost doesn’t think

Now that she has brushed against the bruised
 Arm of oblivion and tasted the blood, now

That the blast furnace has labelled her skin
 And branded her forehead like a Roman slave’s.

Surely God comes to the clumsy and inefficient,
 To welders in dark spectacles, and unskilled

Workers who spend their allotment of days
 Pulling red-hot metal bobbins from the flames.

Surely God appears to the shattered and anonymous,
 To the humiliated and afflicted

Whose legs are married to perpetual motion
 And whose hands are too small for their bodies.

Proposition: “Through work man turns himself
 Into matter, as Christ does through the Eucharist.

Work is like a death. We have to pass
 Through death. We have to be killed.”

We have to wake in order to work, to labor
 And count, to fail repeatedly, to submit

To the furious rhythm of machines, to suffer
 The pandemonium and inhabit the repetitions,

To become the sacrificial beast: time entering
 Into the body, the body entering into time.

She presses her forehead against the table:
 To work in order to eat, to eat . . .

Outside, the moths are flaring into stars
 And stars are strung like beads across the heavens.

Inside, a glass of red wine trembles
 Next to the cold cabbage and broken bread.

Exhausted night, she is the brimming liquid
 And untouched food. Come down to her.

Bet!

Was it raining?

Was it hot enough to stroke?

Were you freezing your nuts off?

Boss being a hardhead?

A dickhead?

A shithead?

All of it!?

Fuck.

Board?

Tired?

Hungover?

Did you make it work?

Don’t I always?

Did you have shit to do it?

Do you ever?

He got sideways with you?

Hows that?

You had to put your hands on him!? Word?

What they got you working?

Five-eights?

Six-tens?

Seven-twelves?!

(Damn bro, that’s like slavery.

Yo! Can I get on that?

For real, I like money too!)

Cut yourself?

Car broke down?

Caught lying like a rug?

Are you fucked up?

Did you fuck it up?

Can you un-fuck it?

Or is it just fucked?

(Why is evrything always a clusterfuck?)

You’re late on rent?

Your old-lady is cheating?

(She’s for the streets bro.)

You’re cheating?

. . .

Was it good?

Lost a woman?

Lost a fight?

Lost some money?

Losing your mind?

Laughter.

Laughter.

Laughter.

Yo man, play that song again.

The Sons of Martha - Rudyard Kipling

The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.

It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.
 
They say to mountains, " Be ye removèd" They say to the lesser floods "Be dry."
Under their rods are the rocks reprovèd–they are not afraid of that which is high.
Then do the hill tops shake to the summit–then is the bed of the deep laid bare,
That the Sons of Mary may overcome it, pleasantly sleeping and unaware.

They finger death at their gloves' end where they piece and repiece the living wires.
He rears against the gates they tend: they feed him hungry behind their fires.
Early at dawn, ere men see clear, they stumble into his terrible stall,
And hale him forth like a haltered steer, and goad and turn him till evenfall.
 
To these from birth is Belief forbidden; from these till death is Relief afar.
They are concerned with matters hidden–under the earthline their altars are
The secret fountains to follow up, waters withdrawn to restore to the mouth,
And gather the floods as in a cup, and pour them again at a city's drouth.

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose.
They do not teach that His Pity allows them to leave their job when they damn-well choose.
As in the thronged and the lighted ways, so in the dark and the desert they stand,
Wary and watchful all their days that their brethren's days may be long in the land.

Raise ye the stone or cleave the wood to make a path more fair or flat;
Lo, it is black already with blood some Son of Martha spilled for that!
Not as a ladder from earth to Heaven, not as a witness to any creed,
But simple service simply given to his own kind in their common need.

And the Sons of Mary smile and are blessèd–they know the angels are on their side.
They know in them is the Grace confessèd, and for them are the Mercies multiplied.
They sit at the Feet–they hear the Word–they see how truly the Promise runs.
They have cast their burden upon the Lord, and–the Lord He lays it on Martha's Sons!