December 8, 2010

•  

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  The Quarry Ghosts

   

   

  It's difficult to trace out where the blockhouse stood

  Although if you look carefully and slice the brush

  The granite base cleared now of strangled berry-wood

  Is visible beyond the wash

   

  Once long ago - this place resounded with delighted cries

  Of children scampering across the quay

  As steamer-cranes lifted huge cuts beyond the rise

  Onto the barkantines that lay at lee

   

  Among weed-woven tangles of this ditch

  You find old lamps and pots and Leslie Magazines

  A shredded doll - A tallow cup stuffed in a niche

  A book of verse marked Josephine's

   

  The names and dates are also chiseled there to read

  The Abels Joshuas Mollys and the rest

  These drillers cutters blasters and their brood

  Whisper across the hundred summers that have passed

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Note:

  The granite used to build Grant's Tomb in Riverside Park

  in New York City came from the quarry on Friendship Long

  Island in Muscongus Bay, Maine... When the workers asked

  for a five-cent hourly raise, the owners in Boston refused

  and abandoned it...The workers decided to operate it

  themselves and hired a young blaster who promptly blew

  a hole out to the sea... The pumps could not keep up

  and it was abandoned again...

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

     

  • 11:07 am
  • 3 Comments