Heart Labor

Source: Unknown/Favim

When I work too hard and then lie down,
even my sleep is sad and all worn out.
You want me to name the specific sorrows?
They do not matter.  You have your own.
Most of the people in the world
go out to work, day after day,
with their voices chained in their throats.
I am swimming a narrow, swift river.
Upstream, the clouds have already darkened
and deep blue holes I cannot see
churn up under the smooth flat rocks.
The Greeks have a word, paropono,
for the complaint without answer,
for how the heart labors, while
all the time our faces appear calm
enough to float through in the moonlight.

~ Maggie Anderson

Heart Labor

Source: Unknown/Favim

When I work too hard and then lie down,
even my sleep is sad and all worn out.
You want me to name the specific sorrows?
They do not matter.  You have your own.
Most of the people in the world
go out to work, day after day,
with their voices chained in their throats.
I am swimming a narrow, swift river.
Upstream, the clouds have already darkened
and deep blue holes I cannot see
churn up under the smooth flat rocks.
The Greeks have a word, paropono,
for the complaint without answer,
for how the heart labors, while
all the time our faces appear calm
enough to float through in the moonlight.

~ Maggie Anderson

Fatigue

Credit: Natasha Veselaya

Stupefy my heart to every day's monotony,

Seal up my eyes, I would not look so far,

Chasten my steps to peaceful regularity,

Bow down my head lest I behold a star.

Fill my days with work, a thousand calm necessities

Leaving no moment to consecrate to hope,

Girdle my thoughts within the dull circumferences

Of facts which form the actual in one short hour's scope.

Give me dreamless sleep, and loose night's power over me,

Shut my ears to sounds only tumultuous then,

Bid Fancy slumber, and steal away its potency,

Or Nature wakes and strives to live again.

Let each day pass, well ordered in its usefulness,

Unlit by sunshine, unscarred by storm;

Dower me with strength and curb all foolish eagerness --

The law exacts obedience. Instruct, I will conform.

~Amy Lowell

Fatigue

Credit: Natasha Veselaya

Stupefy my heart to every day's monotony,

Seal up my eyes, I would not look so far,

Chasten my steps to peaceful regularity,

Bow down my head lest I behold a star.

Fill my days with work, a thousand calm necessities

Leaving no moment to consecrate to hope,

Girdle my thoughts within the dull circumferences

Of facts which form the actual in one short hour's scope.

Give me dreamless sleep, and loose night's power over me,

Shut my ears to sounds only tumultuous then,

Bid Fancy slumber, and steal away its potency,

Or Nature wakes and strives to live again.

Let each day pass, well ordered in its usefulness,

Unlit by sunshine, unscarred by storm;

Dower me with strength and curb all foolish eagerness --

The law exacts obedience. Instruct, I will conform.

~Amy Lowell