Come to Work

Leisure-lovers, looking for
Exotic reasons to explore
The mystery of recent past

Strap on your watches, strive
To look a little nine-to-five
And be Industrial at last

Don’t look as if you’d shirk
Our next activity: To Work-
A game I’m sure you’ll grasp

Get into working rhythm, find
Dancing to The Daily Grind
The ultimate in hip-hop blast

Toss off your miniscule computers
Mingle with these old commuters
Join them in their ancient task

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poem by John a'Beckett
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The Wagner Room

“Sorry, sir. Booked out.. but then...”
The patronne’s voice is calm, you’re
penniless again in Paris, facing doom
and banking on the hope her “then..
..again” - will mean a room.

“.Eh bien, there is..the Wagner one,
“That’s fine”.You sign and slip up to
the premier etage, aware you’re in
a debt of gratitude whose depth
is verging on Wagnerian

and gingerly approach the desk
on which the “Parsifal” composer
must’ve had the opening thunder
chords in music mind, . But find
you’re also forced to wonder-

was it this room’s compression,
exile, mounting debts, Minna’s

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poem by John a'Beckett
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Vistula

A cascade of ices, cold fury
gargling down the Beskids
waiting basket of Baltic,
great span of your lakes
infinite stretch of Mazury-
you, marshal land-giver-
to our lives along banks
into houses and history-
what do you make of us,
God of this river?

Those who would plumb
the crevice dry cracks
fetch in your mystery,
the deep green in you,
River whose currents still
shape us with influence,
run blood in our vein-sinew
wild into your wilderness,
What do you build in us

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poem by John a'Beckett
Added by Poetry Lover
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