Choppers

In the solemn forest two men are chopping a redwood.

They stand facing each other fifteen feet from the ground

On springboards set in the trunk.

And the lisp and whisper of the flashing thin axe-heads

Is like the continuous whistle of flying arrows.

The chipping of the choppers gnaws at the tree,

Wearing it down as the tribesmen's arrows wore down

The granite face of the Sphinx,

Denuding it flake by flake of its features

Through centuries.

The continuous fall of the chips,

Rustling among the leaves and detritus of the solemn

silent forest,

Is like the fluttering of pages in a sober study

By lamplight-

Pages of words, pages of phrases,

Words and phrases of today,

Chips of centuries.

It takes five thousand years to grow a redwood,

Five thousand centuries of centuries

To produce a man, a thought.

There is only one thought to a man;

There is only one bole to a tree.

But a tree or a man or a thought

Leave a great space in the forest;

A space noisy and empty with sunlight

In the solemn surrounding great redwoods.

But the choppers take no thought.

They stand facing each other,

Swinging their axes

With the strength of their thirty years

Against the trees with their fifty centuries.

The trees come down with a great crash

And the choppers make wages and bonus.