From ages immemorial they’ve scratched my patient face
With plow, and pick, and shovel, in all confidence and grace.
They’ve dug their springs, and sunk their wells, and made their post holes, too,
Wherever it has pleased their passing fancy so to do.
But here of late they seem to feel that more is wrong with me
Than to the specialists who came at first there seemed to be.
They’ve stopped the minor surgery--it seemed to be too light
--And started on a major scale to set my system right.
They sink a shaft a solid mile through rock, and sand, and clay.
They go right into it with drills and bore the livelong day.
They cut a tunnel through a hill, and make the two ends fit.
They chop away as though they thought it didn’t hurt a bit.
They change the course of rivers and the shape of waterfalls.
They dig deep excavations for their bridges and their walls.
A major operation of some kind has come to be
A kind of daily diet, in these latter days, with me.
[Poem is surrounded by photos of earth-working equipment in action
around the world (clockwise from top-right corner): Egypt, New Zealand,
Formosa, Chile, Rhodesia, Sicily, Dutch East Indies, Honduras, Ireland,
Nigeria, India, and U.S.A.]