Advice: A Book of Poems

<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</SPAN></span> <h2 class="nobreak">TRACK-WORKERS</h2> <div class="poetry-container"> <div class="poetry"> <div class="verse">The rails you carry cut into your hands,</div> <div class="verse">Like the sharp lips of an unsought lover.</div> <div class="verse">As you stumble over the ties</div> <div class="verse">Sunlight is clinging, yellow spit</div> <div class="verse">Raining down upon your faces.</div> <div class="verse">You are the living cuspidors of day.</div> <div class="verse">Dirt, its teasing ghost, dust,</div> <div class="verse">And passionless kicks of steel, fill you.</div> <div class="verse">Flowers sprouting near the tracks,</div> <div class="verse">Brush their lightly odoured hands</div> <div class="verse">In vain against your stale jackets of sweat.</div> <div class="verse">Within you, minds and hearts</div> <div class="verse">Are snoring to the curt rhythm of your breath.</div> <div class="verse">You do not see this blustering blackbird</div> <div class="verse">Promenading on a barbed-wire fence.</div> <div class="verse">He eyes you with spritelike hauteur,</div> <div class="verse">Unable to understand</div> <div class="verse">Why your motions endlessly copy each other,</div> <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</SPAN></span> <div class="verse">One of you, a meek and burly Pole,</div> <div class="verse">Peers a moment at the strutting blackbird</div> <div class="verse">With a fleeting shade of dull resentment....</div> <div class="verse">There is always one among you</div> <div class="verse">Who recoils from glimpsing corpses.</div> </div></div> <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />