After Hesiod, “Works and Days,” lines 400–500
When summer ceases
its blister, when autumn rain
cools flesh with downpour
and thunder, and Mars hangs
high in the sky, wheels
over stretches of prairie and plain,
gather your returning soldiers: men used to
hardship and hunger;
make them take up
axe and blade to harvest timber
whose wood is free of worms.
Let them hew logs
for crossties, eight feet
each; teach them
to slick lumber with creosote
and hold the heavy beams
upright, those hundred-pound sleepers.
And when the spiker comes
with his ash-handled maul, tell them look awake:
many have split
arms and legs open in the wide swings of his
windmilling
blows. An experienced man
needs only three strikes, but mile
after mile nicks metal
heads, splits handles and wears down
arms and backs and eyes. Young men are best at
the work
but can’t stay the course: they care more for riches
than reputation
and cannot comprehend the limit of their lives.
It comes down
to men who know war, so tend all dangers with care:
men who’ve bled
know the value of peace, even if they find it only
in the smoke and cries
of what still sounds to them
like war. They do not revel
in domestic delights, these warriors
for whom home is gone
to memory, the nation
they once knew changed forever
except in the mind, the strain
of old fears that will not be quieted
by any but familiar labor. And if they scrap and fight on
the line, know at least
this violence is held back
from your cities: such is the value
of work that brings men
back to themselves. This
is how you make men useful
after war. Now Mars fades and Sirius
rises ascendant. Let your great war die in the
West. Winter
won’t last forever.
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