What Has Happened to These Working Hands?
They opened the ground and closed it around seeds.
They added a pinch of tobacco.
They cleaned tired old bodies
and bathed infants.
They got splinters from the dried-out handles of axes.
The right one suspected what the left was doing
and the arms began to ache.
They clawed at each other when life hurt.
They pulled at my hair when I mourned.
They tangled my hair when I dreamed poems.
As fists they hit the bed
when war spread again throughout the world.
They went crazy and broke glasses.
They regretted going to school where they became so soft
their relatives mistook them for strangers.
They turned lamps off and on
and tapped out songs on tables,
made crosses over the heart.
They kneaded bread.
They covered my face when I cried,
my mouth when I laughed.
“You’ve got troubles,” said the left hand to the right,
“Here, let me hold you.”
These hands untwisted buried roots.
They drummed the old burial songs.
They heard there were men cruel enough to crush them.
They drummed the old buried songs.