An Horatian Notion
The thing gets made, gets built, and you’re the slave
who rolls the log beneath the block, then another,
then pushes the block, then pulls a log
from the rear back to the front
again and then again it goes beneath the block,
and so on. It’s how a thing gets made – not
because you’re sensitive, or you get genetic-lucky,
or God says: Here’s a nice family,
seven children, let’s see: this one in charge
of the village dunghill, these two die of buboes, this one
Kierkegaard, this one a drooling
nincompoop, this one clerk, this one cooper.
You need to love the thing you do – birdhouse building,
painting tulips exclusively, whatever – and then
you do it
so consciously driven
by your unconscious
that the thing becomes a wedge
that splits a stone and between the halves
the wedge then grows, i.e., the thing
is solid but with a soul,
a life of its own. Inspiration, the donnée,
the gift, the bolt of fire
down the arm that makes the art?
Grow up! Give me, please, a break!
You make the thing because you love the thing
and you love the thing because someone else loved it
enough to make you love it.
And with that your heart like a tent peg pounded
toward the earth’s core.
And with that your heart on a beam burns
through the ionosphere.
And with that you go to work.
Thomas Lux, from Selected Poems
The university that I work for is currently in conflict with the union that I belong to, the UCU, over Universities UK’s (UUK) proposed changes to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).
This has resulted in lecturers like me taking strike action.
You can read more about the reasons some of us have for taking this action here and here.
For the next few days of strike action I am going to be posting poems on my blog whose subject matter is the world of work and/or education.
On this thirteenth day of strike action we read Thomas Lux’s great ars poetica, and hymn to creativity, An Horatian Notion.
You can follow the #USSStrike hashtag on Twitter here and the #UCUStrike hashtag here.
If you can take the time to retweet or share this poem via social media I would be so grateful.
The views posted in this blog are mine alone and do not represent those of my employer.
Anthony Wilson 