Poem: 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 falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say, “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.

                        Philip Levine

 

 

 

 

A magical illusion and fabulous game

You have seen that the universe is at root
a magical illusion and a fabulous game,
and that there is no separate "you" to get something out of it,
as if life were a bank to be robbed.
The only real "you" is the one that comes and goes,
manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being.
For "you" is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view,
points that come and go so that the vision is forever new.

        Alan Watts, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

 

 

 

Long life

Life well spent is long.

        Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks

 

 

 

Character

Aging is no accident.
It is necessary to the human condition, intended by the soul.
We become more characteristic of who we are simply by lasting into later years;
the older we become, the more our true natures emerge.
Thus the final years have a very important purpose:
the fulfillment and confirmation of one's character.

        James Hillman, The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life

 

 

 

 

 

In praise of trouble makers

Conformity may give you a quiet life;
it may even bring you to a University Chair.
But all change in history, all advance,
comes from the nonconformists.
If there had been no trouble-makers,
no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

         A. J. P. Taylor, The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett

Infinite passion

There is no end.
There is no beginning.
There is only the infinite passion of life.

        Federico Fellini, Fellini on Fellini

 

 

 

 

 

Back to School

The best reason to go to school,
    even if you're a so-called teacher,
        is to find out how much you don't know.

                Pico Iyer, The Best Reason to Go to College, New York Times, September 2020