December 15, 2012

Day 15: RODNEY KOENEKE, THE WORK THEY DO THEY DO AT NIGHT






















(click image for audio)


The Work They Do They Do At Night

They will come in great happiness
To our distributions of millet.
They will come to the millet and be glad. 
Some are blackened, some stumble, some sing.
They lap at our wine jars, the ewers still warm 
From their hands. I know a hand 
Whose stain crushed the wine
And bathing won’t remove it—
The lancet, the lancet’s begetter
Perv that turns in the bed of the lord he serves
A sweet balm broken, applied to skin
The doctor, the doctor’s assistant
New louts burning holes in the stays. 

I see pluts return from the bad world every day,
Shut fields to plebes and feed them. 
They shouldn’t bother—we pass here for others
Who turn in their sleep on the heather

After taking night’s theater, 
The theater’s owners. Who owns you, 
Purveyors of chaos? Who owns the chorus 
That brings you your tunes? We don’t
Know their names in any of the harbors. 
What keeps them making our boats?

2 comments:

et said...

Love this, Rodney!

DUSIE said...

They lap at our wine jars, the ewers still warm/From their hands. I know a hand/Whose stain crushed the wine/
And bathing won’t remove it—

rocking indeed! <3!!!