Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BRICKS AND SLEEP, by CLARENCE MAJOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BRICKS AND SLEEP, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: In late afternoon / the first row finished


In late afternoon,
the first row finished,
lined up neatly end to end,
with mortar still soft
as tree sap between them,
you start the second row,
cutting no slack,
staggering them firmly.
Night, you barely sleep --
still busy stacking
things now you can't see.
And in the morning,
with coffee cup warm in hand,
your bricks are hard
and you're somehow rested,
despite the busy night that
hums like motors in tanks.
Skin fresh to cool breeze
from the south, you start
your sawing. You're cutting
all morning, cutting two-by-fours,
then cutting your beams,
then cutting your planks. Now
you dump a keg of nails out
on your tarp like somebody's
stars spilling in a pattern
across some deep black sky.

In the afternoon when
the sun is too hot you go
upstairs and lie down, reading
a novel about a man
with a rake farming his own
land and you spill into asleep
transplanted to his land
where the soil is moist
and, like his, your hands are brown.
When your work is done,
you enter a dark hut --
like a cove -- and
you build a fire
and with care, warm
those same hands by
the potbelly iron stove
you find there.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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