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American Life in Poetry: Column 527
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Seventy years ago, when I entered Beardshear Elementary in Ames, Iowa, the school employed a custodian, Mr. Shockley, who had for an office a closet under the stairs. I wish I could thank him for mopping up all our vomit and helping us buckle our galoshes. Here’s a fine poem about custodians by David Livewell, from New Jersey, whose most recent book of poems is Shackamaxon (Truman State Univ. Press, 2012).
Custodians
Retired from other trades, they wore
Work clothes again to mop the johns
And feed the furnace loads of coal.
Their roughened faces matched the bronze
Of the school bell the nun would swing
To start the day. They limped but smiled,
Explored the secret, oldest nooks:
The steeple’s clock, dark attics piled
With inkwell desks, the caves beneath
The stage on Bingo night. The pastor
Bowed to the powers in their hands:
Fuses and fire alarms, the plaster
Smoothing a flaking wall, the keys
To countless locks. They fixed the lights
In the crawl space above the nave
And tolled the bells for funeral rites.
Maintain what dead men made. Time blurs
Their scripted names and well-waxed floors,
Those keepers winking through the years
And whistling down the corridors.
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