The Chain Gang
Stripped to the waist,
hard-muscled, downcast, under the guns
of lounging guards, they are clearing a roadside
across a palmetto landscape.
I notice one blond boy swinging a pick,
broad-shouldered. His skin is smooth, bright, sweaty.
His upright body ripples
under the rigid fury of his face.
His bulging eyes fixed on the ground
can see mountains, the destiny
of his imagination he can never get to,
where he could rest, a lion
in the wilderness of his flesh.
I see the body with its own career of gestures—
its bright roads, its dark roads
apart, serene. . .
Men must be carved, apparently,
like slaughtered steers or pigs
to find the marble of their bones
innocent,
innocent after all
as the stones they break, or rain,
or the guards in cages of their white voices.
Trapped in one chained line,
one terrifying combination of arrangements,
driven to taste each other's flesh. . .
The body sings alone
among the earth's arrangements
ignorant of crimes or dreams
or the curious idea of justice.
Robert Winner, "The Chain Gang" from The Sanity of Earth and Grass, published by Tilbury House. Copyright © 1994 by Robert Winner. Reprinted by permission of Sylvia Winner.
Source:
The Sanity of Earth and Grass
(Tilbury House, Publishers, 1994)