The CallingAuthor(s): Augustus YoungSource: Irish University Review, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Spring - Summer, 1998), p. 90Published by: Edinburgh University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25484761 .

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Augustus Young

The Calling A hymn to work

Unstinting giver of yourself for cash

in lieu of love and gratefulness. Slaves hide their feelings underneath the lash.

You nurse with subtle arts and hatefulness

the failing powers of those who play with trash.

Toil is the night unkindly lit by lust to get things done and over, and once more

begin the coupling of the best and worst.

The issue is the cancelling of the score

that is your currency to earn a crust.

Desire is deadened by the nightly round

and daily squaring of the books for greed, the lowest form of appetite, being bound

to endless repetitions. It won't be freed

until your body's buried in the ground.

The odour of corruption may well cleanse

the house that has been built with human bricks.

A life in legacy can make amends.

The victims of your tyranny are fixed

up for life with dead men's dividends.

90

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