In The Marble Quarry

Beginning to dangle beneathThe wind that blows from the undermined wood,I feel the great pulley grind,

The thread I cling to lengthenAnd let me soaring and spinning down into marble,Hooked and weightlessly happy

Where the squared sun shinesBack equally from all four sides, out of stoneAnd years of dazzling labor,

To land at last among menWho cut with power saws a Parian whitenessAnd, chewing slow tobacco,

Their eyebrows like frost,Shunt house-sized blocks and lash them to cablesAnd send them heavenward

Into small-town banks,Into the columns and statues of government buildings,But mostly graves.

I mount my monument and riseSlowly and spinningly from the white-gloved menToward the hewn sky

Out of the basement of light,Sadly, lifted through time’s blinding layersOn perhaps my tombstone

In which the original shapeMichelangelo believed was in every rock upon earthIs heavily stirring,

Surprised to an angel,To be waked in North Georgia by the ponderous playOf men with ten-ton blocks

But no one more surprised than ITo feel sadness fall off as though I myselfWere rising from stone

Held by a thread in midair,Badly cut, local-looking, and totally uninspired,Not a masterwork

Or even worth seeing at allBut the spirit of this place just the same,Felt here as joy.

From Helmets (1964)