Friday, May 8, 2015

6708. RUNNING ON (my sternboat is this paddle-wheeler)

RUNNING ON
(my sternboat is this paddle-wheeler)
I understand all that : you neither know the
day nor the date nor the time, but it will come.
bearing down like a big balloon, something 
ominous and large, descending overhead.
Like the man in the yellowed cartoon was
shouting, 'The end is near, the end is near!'
-
All that I hear (now) is the loud clang of 
destruction : that old factory is coming down. 
Floorboards and I-beams and lollies and supports,
everything crashing down in huge rumbles and 
shouts. Moving away, brick by brick, and all that 
glass is gone. I don't know how they do it, these 
men with fat hands and workmen's gloves  -  
power tools and shovels and backhoes and 
winches. Some form of gravity works for them.
-
I call them men, but they're not even that : old boys,
young, working kids, more like it. Around these
parts now, the old man is me. Standing yet in
place, but  -  alas and sternly  -  soon someday
too ready, as well, to fall. And what a noise that
will be. (My sternboat is this paddle-wheeler).

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