Poems on Labour & Learning
by Robert Einarsson

When the mind gives consent to learning,
the smile of knowledge breaks
on scholars' lips,

and their critical brows release.

The mind grows fat with knowledge,
the spiritual knowledge of truth;

it feeds that great sense of triumph,
as when the goddess, Truth,
enters the room:

a cloud of pleasure
gathers on her brow
as the storm surges

and waves froth and crash.

St Anslem's Reasons

I live in the world, you see,
the world that God made,
not some other world

that he would not make,
and could not make,
even were he not

omnipotent; but being omnipotent limits him
in all of the best ways,
and only in all of them,

only to this,
and to worlds like this,
only to the worlds of factual reality.

philosophical absolutes
(a poem found in a student's answer)

There are things / ideas
that are for sure
and that

no one can change or alter.
They are always present,
and they always occur.

We are always at the crossroads, at the cutting edge.
We have this much in common with every civilization:

courtesy,
mere acquaintance,
and freedom (not slavery),

freedom and society.

There's everything tacit
in freedom and loyalty,
drawing toward or subsisting within:

gravity and love are a simultaneity,
both prior but not previous in time:
we orbit around each other

like a galaxy, with gravity,
love, and one whole, but no
particular, center, with no

one entity:

a placid beauty, full of peace, threads
throughout society, through all
universal human aspiring

the juice of beauty
is the blood of organs,
or the thin film on rocks,

depending on the beauty.

the juice of triumph is the gumption
that little girls express
in their fits of laughter

as it bubbles over.

the juice of doctrine
is the detailed, accurate layering,
in all of the most true textual explications,

uttered in deliberate order.

the flowering hillsides of Eden

the decent flowers of sexuality take many proper forms,
from bud to bloom of a thousand species, 
here in God's garden, Eden.

Then, seeded globes burst plenteously, in due season,
in every corner of the garden;
it rains

down life 
in nourshing showers 
that pool upon a lady's body, 

in old mythology:
the hills of Eden are clad decently,
though they are drenched so thouroughly in sexuality.

at peace in the autumn of labour

my compost is rotting
my garden is sleeping
my houseplants are doing well

both at home and in the office;

that's what it's like
on this wide plateau

atop this mountain of labour
swept by the sky-born winds
on this hot day in autumn:

autumn, that long season,
when damp sidewalks
stretch yellow over

all memories of spring,
is the season I love best of all,
when written sheets like sheaves of autumn fall.

In the cool of the evening,
throughout a vast garden,
with God there walking,

I water the trees that God gave me,
with the water that God also gave me,
and the work of men transported here:

and I drink the wine that God gave me,
and that industrial civilization produced,
giving thanks to the God who gave me this wine ,

and this moment in which I drink it,

wondering if I can ever communicate
the simplistic sincerity, and the

leisure that I use in writing this
to all of my old friends, both those alive,
and dead, and thefar absent, and those never really met,

but all loved by me,
how they all are loved by me:

because the massive labour of each line,

all of its unrepeatable content, and
all of the serious work of life
bind all of my lost loves

into one universal truth.

nature's harmony (a found poem)

Nature's love of fractal shapes is deep.
The random patterns of clouds and coastlines
are almost certainly fractal as well.

And mere statistics are at the heart of it:
a word on surfaces of unitary particles
informs the random surface of them.

The definition of poetry is language which
presents a firm voice so definitively
that no one may mistake it. It is

deliberate wording and phrasing,
phonemes each enunciated,
and counted out, so

that no one may mis-
take it.

Meanings are always implicitly and objectively present,
that much is obvious, because poetry is transparent,
natural discourse, free of all local determinacy

(as anyone can see), and
evading all temporality.

We settle the homesteads, barns, and cottages
of a life that is more being than doing,
more planting than pulling.

Once the harvest is in, then the real planting begins.

The life of plants is brittle and wet.
They grow through no effort in the sun.

The lettuce leaves stay cool in the sun;
the celery stalks pipe their thin juice;
their spines are stiff as eggshell;

the frightful heat just buffs the leaves' edges,
plumps their flesh, and throbs their sap.
The pea pods are stiff as twigs;

their sap is thinner than water;
the heat just shines their bark.
There is no laziness like leaves in the sun

where the sun does all of the work,
and rest is like the warm ground.
and triumph is like thin water:

and putting the garden to bed for winter
in the hot gusts of autumn
there is ease after labour

after long labour, long ease.

advice to academia

can't you see that polyplicature is out?

get in with the old! the
radical old ideas:

eloquent, full sentence forms
expressing one idea, complete
with each of its full members

this is where the money is!

humanwork

is even more meticulous
than work of ant,
wasp, or bee:

silicone in every seam;
repeating perfect
symmetries:

hammer
head, claw, grip . . .
square, flush, plumb . . .

Nothing is made that is not built
through infinite labour,
in perfect measure,

from forged stone-chisels
to royal palaces:
from sweat,

to the click of heels
on fine ceramic
finishes.

sunrise in gardens

new day breaks with new 
songs:  the waking birds sing 
new songs, break from leaves to sing

new songs:  for the new 
songs are the old songs 
on birds' tongues again; 

for truth outs anew
more than once
in one day

and out of one poem, too,
on eyes, say, and
tender lids,

new day breaks.