The Workforce — Poetry from my 2001 Pushcart Prize Anthology

I loved this and wanted to share it. I don't even like poetry. That's how good this was.

The Workforce
by James Tate, from Harvard Review, reprinted in The Pushcart Prize 2001.

Do you have adequate oxen for the job?
No, my oxen are inadequate.
Well, how many oxen would it take to do an adequate job?
I would need ten more oxen to do the job adequately.
I'll see if I can get them for you.
I'd be obliged if you could do that for me.
Certainly. And do you have sufficient fishcakes for the men?
We have fifty fishcakes, which is less than sufficient.
Would fifty more fishcakes be sufficient?
Fifty more fishcakes would be precisely sufficient.
I'll have them delivered on the morrow.
Do you need maps of the mountains and the underworld?
We have maps of the mountains but we lack maps of the underworld.
Of course you lack maps of the underworld,
there are no maps of the underworld.
And, besides, you don't want to go there, it's stuffy.
I had no intention of going there, or anywhere for that matter.
It's just that you asked me if I needed maps...
Yes, yes, it's my fault, I got carried away.
What do you need then, you tell me?
We need seeds, we need plows, we need scythes, chickens, pigs, cows, buckets and women.
Women?
We have no women.
You're a sorry lot then.
We are a sorry lot, sir.
Well I can't get you women.
I assumed as much, sir.
What are you going to do without women, then?
We will suffer, sir. And then we'll die out one by one.
Can any of you sing?
Yes, sir, we have many fine singers among us.
Order them to begin singing immediately.
Either women will find you this way or you will die
comforted. Meanwhile busy yourselves
with the meaningful tasks you have set for yourselves.
Sir, we will not rest until the babes arrive.

Balance, or the Illusion Thereof

Our brains crave meaning. We look for it everywhere. Part of this process involves imaging causal relationships between separate events. I remember when I was a child, my internal self would say, "Do this right now!" or perhaps, "Don't do that!" Always for something mundane. Like grabbing a glass from the cabinet instead of a mug, for example. "No, don't grab the glass," my internal self would chide, right before my fingers made contact. I'd pause, then take the mug instead, mentally berating myself. What possible difference could it make?

And then my mind would invent a string of events that would have been, had I taken the glass. I would have finished my water two seconds sooner. Gone onto whatever I was going to do next that much faster. This alteration to the timeline would propagate, eventually resulting in some horrific catastrophe, averted only due to my hesitation, my choice to take the mug instead of the glass. The butterfly effect, applied to every choice.

As I got older I lost my superstition, and stopped listening to those urges, and eventually, the urges themselves disappeared. But I bring up this little peculiarity of mine to talk about the perception we have of all things being linked. Is it possible to jynx one's self? "Gee, I hope we don't get a thunderstorm right in the middle of our hike."

Then the storm strikes, and you remember making the comment that morning.

I've been thinking a lot recently about a related idea: All things are linked in life by the principle of balance. Specifically, that roughly the same amount of bad stuff must happen to you as good stuff. Perhaps you go through life in roughly a state of equilibrium; some people experience nothing too amazing, but on the flip side nothing terribly awful happens to them, either. Others experience wild swings, like winning the lottery but having a fatal car accident the next year.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Newton's law, applied to our perception of good/bad or lucky/unlucky things in life.

I don't necessarily believe this. It's just something to wonder at. There seems to be balance. Is this just an illusion? Probably.

I wouldn't be thinking of this at all if it weren't for Ilana.

I sit here wondering if perhaps the laws of the universe require that I be miserable over her now, precisely because there was once a time when I couldn't have been happier. Balance. This is the price to pay for all the wonderful times. I hope that's not the case.