Fettling

Claw out the old dogs from their yielding timber,
wield iron tongs to clench and haul the sleeper
groaning from his ballast-bed of years;
with pick and shovel, clear the narrow plot.

Now four good men to heft and berth the fresh
recumbent, cauled with sap, gravid with dense
hardwood grain; to slide him with a sigh
home; to pack and ram the ballast, force-

pry the steel to true, hammer down hard
the young dogs, that each jaw can grip the shining
path from worker to his daily hire;
from scholar's quest to archives; lovers' one-

way journeys down dead-gauged tracks, from shy
first touch, towards the day's dark terminus.