Songs of Labor, and Other Poems

Translated from the Yiddish by Rose Pastor Stokes and Helena Frank
SONGS OF LABOR AND OTHER POEMS
Oh, here in the shop the machines roar so wildly, That oft, unaware that I am, or have been, I sink and am lost in the terrible tumult; And void is my soul... I am but a machine. I work and I work and I work, never ceasing; Create and create things from morning till e’en; For what?—and for whom—Oh, I know not! Oh, ask not! Who ever has heard of a conscious machine?
No, here is no feeling, no thought and no reason; This life-crushing labor has ever supprest The noblest and finest, the truest and richest, The deepest, the highest and humanly best. The seconds, the minutes, they pass out forever, They vanish, swift fleeting like straws in a gale. I drive the wheel madly as tho’ to o’ertake them,— Give chase without wisdom, or wit, or avail.
The clock in the workshop,—it rests not a moment; It points on, and ticks on: Eternity—Time; And once someone told me the clock had a meaning,— Its pointing and ticking had reason and rhyme. And this too he told me,—or had I been dreaming,— The clock wakened life in one, forces unseen, And something besides;... I forget what; Oh, ask not! I know not, I know not, I am a machine.
At times, when I listen, I hear the clock plainly;— The reason of old—the old meaning—is gone! The maddening pendulum urges me forward To labor and labor and still labor on. The tick of the clock is the Boss in his anger! The face of the clock has the eyes of a foe; The clock—Oh, I shudder—dost hear how it drives me? It calls me “Machine!” and it cries to me “Sew!”
At noon, when about me the wild tumult ceases, And gone is the master, and I sit apart, And dawn in my brain is beginning to glimmer, The wound comes agape at the core of my heart; And tears, bitter tears flow; ay, tears that are scalding; They moisten my dinner—my dry crust of bread; They choke me,—I cannot eat;—no, no, I cannot! Oh, horrible toil I born of Need and of Dread.