It’s with substantial sadness, but more substantial
relief that I step aside from this office. This is not
what I signed up for: the mobs that blitz
the castle drawbridge, the hordes that trouble
the doorstep of the local warlock, the throngs
of frothing mouths outside the town hall.
I assure you: no one goes into this business
to supply the clodpolls with weaponry.
I’ll note: they also carry torches. Obviously
torches are also to blame. But I can’t speak
about the torches. If you require additional
information regarding the torches, you’ll need
to talk to the guy who runs the torch-making factory.
His name is Ashton. We are not friends.
I can only speak about pitchforks. And trust me,
I did not pull myself, rung by rung, up the ladder
of the world’s most respected pitchfork enterprise
because I wanted a bunch of smooth brains
using my work in such ill-tempered ways.
That is not what I wanted. I wanted nothing
but the ache in the back and the burn in the legs
and the birds that swoon in the blood
and the inner harmony that only arrives after a day
of using one well-designed fork to efficiently pitch
leaves, manure, grass, or hay, from one pile here,
to a separate pile there. I wanted to the work
to mean something, and I wanted, together, us
to see the field anew after the work was done.