You clear the shallow earth away
bring your long rock-drill to the rock
and all morning long you beat it down while
the steel of its head and the steel of your sledge flow flakes, grows burning hot
and your mate the shaker perpetually turns the drill
From time to time he pours water down and brings up the dust
in the form of grey mud
and from time to time the drill jams but these are details.
At last the hole is deep enough
You take a stick of dynamite a malleable sausage of dynamite
thrust a long capped fuse into its body
and so right down the hole
followed by others, tamped carefully home
carefully, since at this point the future is uncertain and a spark
may scatter you and the shaker abroad
Earth over all, tamped harder still
the end of the fuse left free, an odd black stalk in the bareness
You fray the tip, set light to it, and as the sparks fly free
hissing, you walk off to watch the smoke at a distance.
There is no going back: it is all inevitable now, even
if a child or a chalice were sitting on the mine.
The smoke vanishes for now the flame bores underground
and the future is determinate: a false future, a kind of bastard present.
But the present is not with you yet
past and future confused and still this silence.
The earth leaps, rocks hurtle up black against the sky
a deadly hail of stone comes beating down
in the same moment you hear the boom of the explosion
smoke drifts from the gaping hole
present and future join; time runs orderly again.