No Beer, No Work

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1. Strong Beer “What do you think The bravest drink Under the sky?” “Strong beer,” said I. “There’s a place for everything, Everything, anything, There’s a place for everything Where it ought to be: For a chicken, the hen’s wing; For poison, the bee’s sting; For almond-blossom, Spring; A beerhouse for me.” “There’s a prize for every one […]...
2. The Beer Was Cold Enough It is amazing, while I lay in bed, I had the lines Roaring through my head like locusts on the wing, The unabashed extravagance of such a flock Of stunning words shocked me out of brittle sleep; And sleep avoids me now like something way too out of vogue, So I rise and try to […]...
3. Work Let me but do my work from day to day, In field or forest, at the desk or loom, In roaring market-place or tranquil room; Let me but find it in my heart to say, When vagrant wishes beckon me astray, “This is my work; my blessing, not my doom; “Of all who live, I […]...
4. Work And Joy Each day I live I thank the Lord I do the work I love; And in it find a rich reward, All price and praise above. For few may do the work they love, The fond unique employ, That fits them as a hand a glove, And gives them joy. Oh gentlefolk, do you and […]...
5. Astrophel and Stella VII: WhenNature Made her Chief Work When Nature made her chief work, Stella’s eyes, In colour black why wrapt she beams so bright? Would she in beamy black, like painter wise, Frame daintiest lustre, mix’d of shades and light? Or did she else that sober hue devise, In object best to knit and strength our sight; Lest, if no veil these […]...
6. Work chapter VII Then a ploughman said, “Speak to us of Work.” And he answered, saying: You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth. For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission […]...
7. Work Gangs BOX cars run by a mile long. And I wonder what they say to each other When they stop a mile long on a sidetrack. Maybe their chatter goes: I came from Fargo with a load of wheat up to the danger line. I came from Omaha with a load of shorthorns and they splintered […]...
8. The Way Things Work is by admitting Or opening away. This is the simplest form Of current: Blue Moving through blue; Blue through purple; The objects of desire Opening upon themselves Without us; the objects of faith. The way things work Is by solution, Resistance lessened or Increased and taken Advantage of. The way things work Is that we […]...
9. It is easy to work when the soul is at play It is easy to work when the soul is at play But when the soul is in pain The hearing him put his playthings up Makes work difficult then It is simple, to ache in the Bone, or the Rind But Gimlets among the nerve Mangle daintier terribler Like a Panter in the Glove...
10. The Gardener X: Let Your Work Be, Bride Let your work be, bride. Listen, the Guest has come. Do you hear, he is gently shaking The chain which fastens the door? See that your anklets make no loud Noise, and that your step is not over- Hurried at meeting him. Let your work be, bride, the guest Had come in the evening. No, […]...
11. What Work Is We stand in the rain in a long line Waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work. You know what work is if you’re Old enough to read this you know what Work is, although you may not do it. Forget you. This is about waiting, Shifting from one foot to another. Feeling the light rain […]...
12. On No Work Of Words On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft: To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to […]...
13. Work When twenty-one I loved to dream, And was to loafing well inclined; Somehow I couldn’t get up steam To welcome work of any kind. While students burned the midnight lamp, With dour ambition as their goad, I longed to be a gayful tramp And greet adventure on the road. But now that sixty years have […]...
14. There Are Those Who Love To Get Dirty There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work, And those who stay clean, just appreciate things, At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea....
15. Work Without Hope All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair- The bees are stirring-birds are on the wing- And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. Yet well I ken the […]...
16. Climbing You I want to understand the steep thing That climbs ladders in your throat. I can’t make sense of you. Everywhere I look you’re there A vast landmark, a volcano Poking its head through the clouds, Gulliver sprawled across Lilliput. I climb into your eyes, looking. The pupils are black painted stage flats. They can be […]...
17. Domestic Work, 1937 All week she’s cleaned Someone else’s house, Stared down her own face In the shine of copper Bottomed pots, polished Wood, toilets she’d pull The lid to that look saying Let’s make a change, girl. But Sunday mornings are hers Church clothes starched And hanging, a record spinning On the console, the whole house Dancing. […]...
18. In Memoriam A. H. H.: 118. Contemplate all this work of Tim Contemplate all this work of Time, The giant labouring in his youth; Nor dream of human love and truth, As dying Nature’s earth and lime; But trust that those we call the dead Are breathers of an ampler day For ever nobler ends. They say, The solid earth whereon we tread In tracts of fluent […]...
19. Work for Immortality Some Work for Immortality The Chiefer part, for Time He Compensates immediately The former Checks on Fame Slow Gold but Everlasting The Bullion of Today Contrasted with the Currency Of Immortality A Beggar Here and There Is gifted to discern Beyond the Broker’s insight One’s Money One’s the Mine –...
20. The Real Work It may be that when we no longer know what to do We have come our real work, And that when we no longer know which way to go We have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings....
21. New Mexico I was fairly drunk when it Began and I took out my bottle and used it Along the way. I was reading a week or two after Kandel and I did not look quite as Pretty but I brought it off and we Ended up at the Webbs, 6, 8, 10 of Us, and I […]...
22. To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wintgs on, Testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade, And think of that first flawless moment over the lawn Of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made! There below are the trees, as awkward as camels; And here are the shocked starlings pumping past And think of […]...
23. A Snifter After working hard all day In the office, How much worse on homeward way My old cough is! Barney’s Bar is gaily lit, Let me stop there; Just to buck me up a bit Have a drop there. As I stand beside the screen Hesitating, I have thought of how Noreen Will be waiting; Baby […]...
24. Work I caught rumours of some internal hearing Then you appeared with tears squeezing your eyes, Hands scrunched up like a child’s, rice paper skin. That work mates complained was a big surprise As you were office sunshine, shafted no-one, And turned your quick mind to the broadest cause. But there you were, a whisper finished…gone, […]...
25. Work And Contemplation The woman singeth at her spinning-wheel A pleasant chant, ballad or barcarole; She thinketh of her song, upon the whole, Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel Is full, and artfully her fingers feel With quick adjustment, provident control, The lines too subtly twisted to unroll Out to a perfect thread. I […]...
26. The Day's Work We now, held in captivity, Spring to our bondage nor grieve See now, how it is blesseder, Brothers, to give than receive! Keep trust, wherefore we were made, Paying the debt that we owe; For a clean thrust, and the shear of the blade, Will carry us where would go. The Ship that Found Herself. […]...
27. Making It Work 3-foot blue cannisters of nitro Along a conveyor belt, slow fish Speaking the language of silence. On the roof, I in my respirator Patching the asbestos gas lines As big around as the thick waist Of an oak tree. “These here are The veins of the place, stuff Inside’s the blood.” We work in rain, […]...
28. Sonnet 5: Those hours, that with gentle work did frame Those hours, that with gentle work did frame The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, Will play the tyrants to the very same And that unfair which fairly doth excel; For never-resting Time leads summer on To hideous winter and confounds him there, Sap checked with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o’ersnowed […]...
29. Sonnet V: Those Hours, That With Gentle Work Did Frame Those hours, that with gentle work did frame The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, Will play the tyrants to the very same And that unfair which fairly doth excel; For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter, and confounds him there; Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o’er-snowed […]...
30. Spirit whose Work is Done SPIRIT whose work is done! spirit of dreadful hours! Ere, departing, fade from my eyes your forests of bayonets; Spirit of gloomiest fears and doubts, (yet onward ever unfaltering pressing;) Spirit of many a solemn day, and many a savage scene! Electric spirit! That with muttering voice, through the war now closed, like a tireless […]...
31. The Heap of Rags One night when I went down Thames’ side, in London Town, A heap of rags saw I, And sat me down close by. That thing could shout and bawl, But showed no face at all; When any steamer passed And blew a loud shrill blast, That heap of rags would sit And make a sound […]...
32. Bottle 'O&#039 I ain’t the kind of bloke as takes to any steady job; I drives me bottle cart around the town; A bloke what keeps ‘is eyes about can always make a bob I couldn’t bear to graft for every brown. There’s lots of handy things about in everybody’s yard, There’s cocks and hens a-runnin’ to […]...
33. Sister Cat Cat stands at the fridge, Cries loudly for milk. But I’ve filled her bowl. Wild cat, I say, Sister, Look, you have milk. I clink my fingernail Against the rim. Milk. With down and liver, A word I know she hears. Her sad miaow. She runs To me. She dips In her whiskers but Doesn’t […]...
34. Layover Making love in the sun, in the morning sun In a hotel room Above the alley Where poor men poke for bottles; Making love in the sun Making love by a carpet redder than our blood, Making love while the boys sell headlines And Cadillacs, Making love by a photograph of Paris And an open […]...
35. The Logical Vegetarian “Why shouldn’t I have a purely vegetarian drink? Why shouldn’t I take vegetables in their highest form, so to speak? The modest vegetarians ought to stick to wine or beer, plain vegetable drinks, instead of filling their goblets with the blood of bulls and elephants, as all conventional meat-eaters do, I suppose” Dalroy. You will […]...
36. Home Fires IN a Yiddish eating place on Rivington Street… faces… coffee spots… children kicking at the night stars with bare toes from bare buttocks. They know it is September on Rivington when the red tomaytoes cram the pushcarts, Here the children snozzle at milk bottles, children who have never seen a cow. Here the stranger wonders […]...
37. Swing Shift Blues What is better than leaving a bar In the middle of the afternoon Besides staying in it or not Having gone into it in the first place Because you had a decent woman to be with? The air smells particularly fresh After the stale beer and piss smells. You can stare up at the whole […]...
38. We Go Out Together In the Staring Town We go out together into the staring town And buy cheese and bread and little jugs with Flowered labels Everywhere is a tent where we put on our whirling Show A great deal has been said of the handless serpents Which war has set loose in the gay milk of our Heads But because you […]...
39. The Road to Gundagai The mountain road goes up and down From Gundagai to Tumut Town And, branching off, there runs a track Across the foothills grim and black, Across the plains and ranges grey To Sydney city far away. It came by chance one day that I From Tumut rode to Gundagai, And reached about the evening tide […]...
40. A Greek Girl I may not weep, not weep, and he is dead. A weary, weary weight of tears unshed Through the long day in my sad heart I bear; The horrid sun with all unpitying glare Shines down into the dreary weaving-room, Where clangs the ceaseless clatter of the loom, And ceaselessly deft maiden-fingers weave The fine-wrought […]...