The Grey-Eyed Goddess

People

look at the people: elbows, knees,

earlobes, crotches, feet,

noses, lips, eyes, all the parts

usually clothed, and they are

engaged

in whatever they usually do

which is hardly ever

delightful,

their psyches stuffed with

used matter and propaganda,

advertising propaganda, religious

propaganda, sexual propaganda,

political propaganda, assorted

propagandas, and they

themselves are

dull and vicious.

they are dull because they have been

made dull and they are

vicious because they are

fearful of losing what they have.

the people are the biggest

horror show on earth,

have been for centuries.

you could be sitting in a

room with one of them

now

or with many of

them.

or you could be one

of them.

every time the phone

rings or there is a knock on

the door

I’m afraid it will be one of

the disgusting,

spiritually destroyed

useless

babbling

ugly

fawning

hateful

humans.

or worse, on picking up the

phone the voice I hear

might be my

own,

or upon opening the

door

I will see myself

standing there,

a remnant of the

wasted centuries,

smiling a

false smile,

having learned well,

having forgotten

what I am here

for.

-Charles Bukowski

For St. Patrick’s day weekend, Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney’s,

“Digging”:

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pin rest; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.