An Horation Notion - Thomas Lux

The thing gets made, gets built, and you're the slave
who rolls the log beneath the block, then another,
then pushes the block, then pulls a log
from the rear back to the front
again and then again it goes beneath the block,
and so on. It's how a thing gets made -- not
because you're sensitive, or you get genetic-lucky
or God says: here's a nice family,
seven children, let's see: this one in charge
of the village dunghill, these two die of buboes, this
one
Kierkregaard, this one a drooling

nincompoop, this one clerk, this one cooper.
You need to love the thing you do--birdhouse building,
painting tulips exclusively, whatever, and
then you do it
so consciously driven
by your unconscious
that the thing becomes a wedge
that splits a stone and between the halves
the wedge then grows, i.e. the thing
is solid but with a soul,
a life of its own. Inspiration, the donnee,
the gift, the bolt of fire
down the arm that makes the art?
Grow up! Give me a f***ing break!
You make the thing because you love the thing
and you love the thing because someone else loves it
enough to make you love it.
And with that your heart like a tent peg pounded
toward the earth's core.
And with that your heart on a beam burns
through the ionosphere.
And with that you go to work.