Today marks the first anniversary of the death of Fred Voss (you can read my obituary here). I am very grateful to Professor A.E. Stallings for giving permission to publish her poem, ‘The Machines Mourn the Passing of People, to honour Fred.’ When I read this poem just a few weeks ago, I couldn’t quite believe how pertinent and poignant the poem is. It addresses the end of work, but instead of the redundancy of the worker, Stallings speaks of the machines. The poem is taken from her Selected Poems: This Afterlife, published by Carcanet.

The poem is dedicated to Fred’s partner, the poet Joan Jobe Smith.

The Machines Mourn the Passing of People

We miss the warmth of their clumsy hands,
The oil of their fingers, the cleansing of use
That warded off dust, and the warm abuse
Lavished upon us as reprimands.

We were kicked like dogs when we were broken,
But we did not whimper. We gritted our cogs–
An honor it was to be treated like dogs
To incur such warm words roughly spoken,

The way that they pleaded with us if we balked –
‘Come on, Come on,’ in a hoarse whisper
As they would urge a reluctant lover–
The feel of their warm breath when they talked!

How could we guess they would ever be gone?
We are shorn now of tasks, and the lovely work –
Not toiling, not spinning – like lilies that shirk–
Like the brash dandelions that savage the lawn.

The now is silent of curses or praise
Jilted, abandoned to hells of what weather
Left to our own devices forever.
We watch the sun rust at the end of its days.