Occupational Hazards
Butcher
If I want to go to pieces
I can do that. When I try
to pull myself together
I get sausage.
Bakers
Can't be choosers. Rising
from a white bed, from dreams
of kings, bright cities, buttocks,
to see the moon by daylight.
Tailor
It's not the way the needle
drags the poor thread around.
It's sewing the monster together,
my misshapen son.
Gravediggers
To be the baker's dark opposite,
to dig the anti-cake, to stow
the sinking loaves in the unoven —
then to be dancing on the job!
Woodcutter
Deep in my hands
as far as I can go
the fallen trees
keep ringing.
_________________
David Young
The Names of a Hare in English
Pittsburgh 1979
