Interlude - "A Sense of Purpose"

Every citizen has work, has a job to do,
"Professor Tang tells me.
A sense of accomplishment.
A sense of purpose.

I. And I watch the men
with the the woven baskets
longer than a human torso
harnessed to their backs.
They appear in pairs, in trios.
They have come in
from the farms,
from the China countryside,
from villages even more remote than Bijie.

They wield picks
capable of crushing rock
into fragments of fractured gray stone.
Their arms pulse at wrist and elbow,
sinewy and stretched,
like human flesh canvas
over ancient bone.

The nails of their feet
are black and cracked
like stubborn Bijie mud
after a thunder and lightning sky.
A replica of the encrusted lines
below their eyes.
These are old eyes,
cavernous eyes,
eyes that have absorbed
the dust of the road,
the refuse of the pick,
the very earth itself.

II. And I watch the woman
with the alley marketplace straw broom
sashaying side to side
her whole body familiar close
to the stick,
the broom handle her wooden lover.
Her hands clutch the shoulders of the broom
and the dust dervishes round her shoes,
burying them in brown haze and smoke.
All around her
the dust swirls
inside the weary wind,
and the dance goes on,
never exiting to stage right
or stage left.

III. And I watch the man with the pick axe
hacking away at a furrow
in the road,
hollowing out a jagged line of concrete
where new road will be laid.
His woven triangular hat
pushes the sun from his eyes
and the dust
from his mouth.

His pounding is rhythmic,
his hands are metered machines,
liaisons between pick and cement.

He has been chiseling
this miniature trench
since I passed him at 7 a.m.
It is now almost supper,
and he does not raise a chalky palm
to wipe his forehead.
His work is below his eyes,
fixed,
assured that time
will never stop breathing
as long as his hands are in motion,
as long as the pick axe breaks ground.

- Marianne Forman