What value this? To what end these?

To sort, to scan, to type the keys,

To file, to phone, to read the mail,

To meet, to melt as air grows stale?

 

Were we not naked once, and wild?
Deeds and natures reconciled?
Did not our fathers' backs and hands
Raise up these walls, restore these lands?

 

Were I set free to tread the field—

Shirt off my back—and bravely wield

The scythe, the saw, the wheel, the plow,

Would I wish for...what I do now?

 

I sit; I sort; I think; I plan.

Do these things make me less a man?

Do strain, grit, struggle, sweat and toil,

To split the block and turn the soil,

Make me nobler, or just tired?

 

I need to know—I've just been fired.