S10E1: "Fanfare for the Makers" by Louis MacNeice

In this tenth season of The Well Read Poem podcast, we are going to read six poems about the blessings and curses of labor. Work is a thing we both enjoy and dislike, and some professions are easier for poets to draw inspiration from than others. These poems come from different ages of literary history, and hopefully will leave the reader with a sense of what work has meant to different minds over the course of the centuries. Today's selection is "Fanfare for the Makers" by Louis MacNeice; poem begins at timestamp  5:02.

Fanfare for the Makers

by Louis MacNeice

A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what? To the small fire that never leaves the sky. To the great fire that boils the daily pot.

To all the things we are not remembered by, Which we remember and bless. To all the things That will not notice when we die,

Yet lend the passing moment words and wings.

So fanfare for the Makers: who compose A book of words or deeds who runs may write As many who do run, as a family grows

At times like sunflowers turning towards the light. As sometimes in the blackout and the raids One joke composed an island in the night.

As sometimes one man’s kindness pervades A room or house or village, as sometimes Merely to tighten screws or sharpen blades

Can catch a meaning, as to hear the chimes At midnight means to share them, as one man In old age plants an avenue of limes

And before they bloom can smell them, before they span The road can walk beneath the perfected arch, The merest green print when the lives began

Of those who walk there with him, as in default Of coffee men grind acorns, as in despite Of all assaults conscripts counter assault,

As mothers sit up late night after night Moulding a life, as miners day by day Descend blind shafts, as a boy may flaunt his kite

In an empty nonchalant sky, as anglers play Their fish, as workers work and can take pride In spending sweat before they draw their pay.

As horsemen fashion horses while they ride, As climbers climb a peak because it is there, As life can be confirmed even in suicide:

To make is such. Let us make. And set the weather fair.