putterings 508 < 509 > 510 index
putterings and stillness; for her work is a silent thing
She will arrange the clothes in the small room under the stair with little putterings and stillness; for her work is a silent thing, and these slow hours of hers slump down on the heap of day with no noise. She will arrange old clothes while the hours are molded flat and smooth under the fingers of evening.
Pile up this easy day to the low rims of the sun; for her work fills the forms of fifty years with a slow being. Fill this shallow hour with indifferent soil that will not change: her work is ancient clay behind these refingered masks, this smear of joys and the dark rouge of weeping and the quickness of years. She smoothes the heap of day again after a yesterday, and night comes easily through the door. She will lay old clothes in order for an hour or so here beside the bare wall of sleep.
ex “School-teacher,” one of the sections of Baker Brownell his “Poems in Cadence” that appeared in Poetry, A Magazine of Verse 22:2 (May 1923) : 59-66 (64) : link
U California copy/scan (via hathitrust) : link
—
Baker Brownell (1887-1965)
reporter, poet, educator (mostly at Northwestern U), philosopher
wikipedia : link
from which —
“Initially, he was a lecturer in editorial writing and journalism, but soon began teaching courses in contemporary thought and philosophy.”