Today, the sounds of construction awoke me.

 

The pounding of steel pylons into the ground

 

Shook the floors of my house and rattled my teeth.

 

And when I left to go to work

 

I felt all the lost and hopeless,

 

Surrender to the thunder and power,

 

The roar of the cars, the movement of steamrollers

 

And the frightening giant maw of the steamshovel eating the earth.

 

We are making progress and building our future. 

 

And on the street I saw:

 

Aspiring poets whose words would not flow 

 

But stuck in their gorge 

 

Because the sentences would not scan 

 

And the meaning was too full to fit into parceled out letters,

 

Painters whose vision was blocked by the world,

 

Actors whose time was spent teaching to earn money,

 

Musicians who no longer played but whistled in offices, 

 

And dancers who shuffled in line ups for buses.

 

They submit to our progress, it moves forward apace.

 

I met women whose beauty was battered 

 

By beatings, or cheating husbands or simple insults 

 

Or whose faces were drained of hope by the slow drip, drip 

 

Of filtered life and the dregs of leftover compromises, 

 

Children who blamed their mothers for their failures 

 

And everywhere, mounds of stinking guilt sitting in the corner 

 

And ignored as if it were shit no one wished to acknowledge.

 

For nothing can stop the progress we’re building, the destiny we’re shaping.

 

I found poor people with no money

 

And addicts who sold their bodies for a fix

 

And all the endless human mess that just seemed to slide down the generations

 

Unaffected by the invention of computers or cell phones.

 

But we are making progress towards our final destination

 

And whoever said you could make an omelette without breaking some eggs?