February 13, 2013

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  The Quarry Ghosts   -   Repost 

   

  It's difficult to trace out where the block-house 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 quarried on Friendship Long Island in Muscongus Bay Maine

  was used to build Grant’s Tomb in Riverside Park in New York City.

  Sometime later the workers struck for a five-cent hourly raise and the Boston

  owners shut the quarry down rather than give in to them – The men decided

  to work the granite themselves and hired an overzealous young blaster who

  promptly blew a hole through to the sea and the pumps could not contain the

  flooding so the quarry was abandoned.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

    

  • 4:46 pm
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