DYFJ

Thanks to Purdue for Permission to Re-print
I have to admire my son Sam (#43; far right) who spends the summer getting up most mornings at 5:45 for a couple hours of weight training and then returns in the afternoon for a couple more hours of kicking practice. He shared with me a little mantra that he learned from one of his coaches on how to stay focused when all the world around seems out of whack: "DYFJ" (just do your f---ing job)!

With that in mind, I have assembled the following collection, all related to the theme of work and, more importantly, DYFJ!

"Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do.
Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

Mark Twain
from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
************************
“The Master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which; he simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.”

Lawrence Pearsall Jacks

************************I Want A Lot

You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces
that so work and feel thirst.

You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.

[Alt. translation:
You cherish those
who grip you for survival.]

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

[Alt. translation:
You are not dead yet, it’s not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life that reveals itself quietly there.]

Rainer Maria Rilke / translated by Robert Bly

************************To Be Of Use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Marge Piercy
************************

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Life's Calm Secret

You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces
that so work and feel thirst.

You love most of all those who need you
as they need a crowbar or a hoe.

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

by Rainer Maria Rilke

from the Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly

Sometimes We Try Too Hard

THINGS TO THINK
Think in ways you've never thought before
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

by Robert Bly, (b. 1926)
American poet & activist
[When I was an undergraduate, I was lucky enough
to hear Bly give a poetry reading and play the dulcimer.]

The Full Hunters' Moon . . . . . . photographed from my front porch
THE DOOR
Go and open the door.
Maybe outside there's
a tree, or a wood,
a garden,
or a magic city.

Go and open the door.
Maybe a dog's rummaging,
maybe you'll see a face,
or an eye,
or a picture
of a picture.

Go and open the door.
If there's a fog
it will clear.

Go and open the door.
Even if there's only
the darkness ticking,
even if there's only
the hollow wind,
even if
nothing
is there,
go and open the door.

At least
there'll be
a draught.

by Miroslav Holub (1923 - 98)
Czech poet and immunologist
[Translated by George Theiner; in Holub's collection,
Intensive Care: Selected and New Poems ]

At least you'll see the moon . . .