Saturday Poem

Junk

.......................

Huru Welandes

worc ne geswiceσ?

monna ænigum

σara σe Mimming can

heardne gehealdan.
                  —Waldere

----------------------------

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.   

 Yet the things themselves

                                                 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.

..............................

by Richard Wilbur

from Strong Measures: Contemporary

American Poetry in Traditional Forms

Harper Collins, 1986