Labor Day, To Honor Workers

Labor Day,
to Honor Workers;
a holiday,
a reason for rest,
no doubt,
a reason to party
and shout,
a reason to forget
what it’s about:
We made it a Holiday,
so we’d never have to
think about it again.

To Honor Workers
takes more than a day,
takes more than a say
in safety and pay.

To Honor Workers
takes more than a job,
more than a car-key fob,
more than a tip can swab.

To Honor Workers,
we need to know,
we need to grow,
and we need to sew
the world in our work.

To Honor Workers,
know the world is our work,
grow this job we cannot shirk;
sew us, from laborer to clerk,
in policies that truly care,
in wages that are truly fair,
in the one-to-one parity we share
because we are human individuals.

To honor Workers,
take people off the streets,
give them a job and a place;
give them a reason to be,
a community to be for,
give a damn about the people
and what they, what we, need;
we’re all here to be for one another.

Labor Day,
To Honor Workers,
this is indeed the test,
to understand the latitude,
to find the right amplitude,
build character and attitude
fitting for a world of work,
for the whole World of Workers.

© 2017 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Sonnet on a Poem by Ch'iu Wei

To this place, at the mountaintop,
have I climbed, in search of you and of truth;
my knock at the door echoes without stop.
Table and hearth are revealed in the booth,
but your presence is lacking, forsooth;
perhaps you fish the pools of the river.
In vain have I called on you, so uncouth

my need to know, guised to deliver

greeting. Instead, visited by shiver

of fresh rain on grass and murmuring pines,

thus I breathe in peace, sliver on sliver,

‘til purified, cleansed, emptied of designs.

Descending your mountain, light on my feet,

I know I’ve been met, and now am replete.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

A note to readers:

This sonnet is the result of an experiment. A hyperactive reader, I far too often (for the sake of my pocketbook) find myself in bookstores. I particularly like secondhand shops, as there are treasures to be found that are no longer in print; many of these are unlikely to ever be reprinted. One such treasure, a recent find, is a Chinese/English printing, entitled (in Chinese and English) “Three Hundred Poems of the Tong Dynasty.” It is a trade paper, sewn edition. Because I cannot read Chinese, neither do know the publication information or year, or the name of the translator(s). The only clue I have as to the book’s origin is the book seller’s stamp in the back of the volume: Hansan Trading Company, 28 Pell Street, New York, NY 10013; This business no longer exists.  

While waiting for my dental appointment to begin, I opened the book and started reading. One poem, not very far in, struck my eye. Thematically, the poem represents so much of what I feel life is like and about, for me and for many others: A trip through the wilderness, in search of answers.

This is the poem, as translated (by Witter Bynner, I later discover) in the Hansan Trading Company book:

After Missing the Recluse on the Western Mountain

To your hermitage here on the top of the mountain
I have climbed, without stopping, these ten miles,
I have knocked at your door, and no one answered;
I have peeped into your room, at your seat beside the table.
Perhaps you are out riding in your canopied chair,
Or fishing, more likely, in some autumn pool.
Sorry though I am to be missing you,
You have become my meditation—
The beauty of your grasses, fresh with rain,
And close beside your window the music of your pines.
I take into my being all that I see and hear,
Soothing my senses, quieting my heart;
And though there be neither host nor guest,
Have I not reasoned a visit complete?
After enough, I have gone down the mountain.
Why should I wait for you any longer?

Digging around on the internet, I found this translation by Mike O’Connor (at https://www.unf.edu/mudlark/mudlark07/recluse.html):

On Failing to Meet the Recluse of West Peak

On the mountain top: 

one thatched hut,

thirty li 

from nowhere.

Knock on the door: 

no servant to answer.

Look in: 

only a table for tea.

The firewood cart 

is covered;

have you gone fishing 

in the autumn stream?

I looked among the pools, 

but missed you;

wanting to pay my respects,

they must go unexpressed.

Grass shines 

in the fresh rain;

pines murmur 

at evening windows.

Here, at this moment, 

a harmony deep and unrivaled;

the self completely cleansed, 

the heart, the ear.

Although there is no 

guest and host precisely,

I'm able to intuit 

your pure thought.

Purpose fulfilled, 

I head back down the mountain;

what need now 

to wait for you?

Looking further into the matter, I find out that this book is an iteration of the classic collection of poems from the Tang Dynasty (618–907), first compiled in the Qing Dynasty by the scholar Sun Zhu, around the year 1763. Ch’iu Wei or Qiu Wei or 邱為 lived from 694 to around 789, and his work is represented in this anthology by this single poem. The poem was written in a form known as five character old style or Gushi. I will leave you to investigate the form on your own.

While I was having my teeth cleaned, I was rolling this poem around in my mind, and I wondered if I could take this material, which had been translated into free verse, and work it into at least somewhat of a metrical setting. I don’t know why I selected the sonnet form—perhaps because the way the poem is presented in Chinese is in groupings of five characters.

As to the success or failure of my experiment, that is up to you.

Examining The Occupy Movement: Government is of, by and for what? PEOPLE!

“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”


       President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

“Democracy is direct self-government over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.”

       Reverend Theodore Parker (1810-1860)

“There are more and more people in the streets in this time of stunning disregard for the health of social service in our nation…”

       The Very Reverend W. Mark Richardson, Ph.D. (Grace Cathedral, October 21, 2011)

“To restore prosperity we must return to a spirit of shared sacrifice. But our elected representatives have failed to find the courage to create a tax system that will allow us to contribute to our own prosperity. This must be done while removing loopholes for those who refuse to pay their fair share. It also is the legitimate role of government to provide oversight of the economy. Overstimulation and a lack of regulation - as we have seen in the stock and housing markets - create unsustainable bubbles.”

       Steve Zolno (“Why We Need To Tax Ourselves”, Open Forum on Democracy, San Francisco Chronicle, November 18, 2011)

Recently, there have been letters to editors of newspapers, in this and other countries, decrying the unruly crowds of protesters who have set up encampments. “These are nothing but filthy homeless encampments,” one such writer whines.

Homeless and homelessness. The problem of homelessness has been a long-standing and neglected fact of life in the United States. And now homelessness has unwittingly become the symbol of that travesty has been made of our economy by people who have believed themselves to be privileged to ravage the financial infrastructures of the world, while they were in administrative positions charged with responsibility and oversight.

The foxes are in the henhouse, folks.

The headlines cry out about the inequities, the plunging rate of job availability and the rise of unemployment. Wall Street, rewarded for their reckless gambling with public money (that is, money belonging to the public) by having been bailed out with more public money from our Federal Reserve, are now reporting record profits. Fancy that.

The foxes are in the henhouse, folks.

Articles report on the 10%-15% rise in health insurance rates, while professionals have made meager 3% raises or had to take pay cuts in order to keep their jobs. An article a few days ago asserted that 20% of a family’s income goes to health insurance. My own family pays as much for health insurance as we do for housing. Fancy that.

The foxes are in the henhouse, folks.

Administrators cry, “We must cut the budgets! We must cut services! The costs are too high to be sustainable!” These very administrators, working in industries ranging from healthcare to education to insurance to government (local, state and federal) cry out for across the board cuts, cuts, cuts! And they give themselves, either by the conceit of vote or by acclamation, raises, bonuses and benefits that the average person cannot obtain in the marketplace. Fancy that.

The foxes are in the henhouse, folks.

Lobbyists have bought out our administrators in exchange for the many quid pro quos that will allow their masters (“captains of industry”) to hoodwink the public into thinking that the health and wellbeing of our nation, of our people costs too much. The silent assertions are: caring costs too much and people are not worth the expense. Fancy that. How does that notion make you feel? Do you think that this is true?

The foxes are in the hen house, folks. The hens are gone, now. Where will the foxes go from here? What will they raid next? What will they kill, aside from dreams for a better life?

This life that we lead is all about life. “Progress” has been advertised for generations as moving all of humanity toward greater equity, but the reality is that a few people have been carving out territories and staking claims where they have no right to do so, and we are all the poorer for their sins and their reckless disregard.

The protesters have taken to the streets, as well they should. The foxes are currently hiding in their henhouses, but their mass media slaves have either been told not to report on the protests or to spin tales of omission and that complain of all the rabble and the noise and the homelessness and the filth, if they do report. And some of the public buy into this notion, hence all the whining I see bouncing out of the editorial pages.

All these filthy people, where do they all come from? They are saying something, but their message is unclear. Because their message is unclear, we don’t need to listen.

However, this nation was formed to be a more perfect union. Democracy was supposed to work for all people, not just some.

As we enter into this winter season of caring and sharing, we need to be not for ourselves alone, but for our neighbors and our neighbors’ neighbors, we need to be people helping people. Because our administrators won’t do this, we must. And we must consider casting down our administrators, because they no longer work for the people, but for themselves and their industry masters alone.

Bell Jar Studies

2.

The delicate flower,

alone in moist soil,
blooms shyly.

Overexposure
to burning rays
unsettles
the fragile atmosphere.

Moisture,
like love,
is withdrawn.

Lack of attention
to need,
from without
and perhaps even within,
results
in death.

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen