World Class Poetry Blog

“A Labor Day Rosary”: A Different Kind Of Religious Poem
8 April 2008, the poet @ 2:55 pm

One can hardly call “A Labor Day Rosary” by Jeff Rath a religious poem. But then one can hardly say it isn’t, either. The poem, in its simple brilliance, merges the lines between the political and the religious. In America, the two are inextricably intertwined. The Religious Right has its political heroes; so, too, does the religiously liberal (and liberally religious) have theirs. To be sure, there are two Christianities in America - the one that crucifies Adam Smith on the cross of economic policy, and the one that magnifies Karl Marx in the light of the City of God. The fight for America’s soul lies in the grasp of these two warring factions.

Of course, one need not be religious to believe in Smith’s capitalism any more than one need be religious to adhere to a belief in Marxism. But Marxists tend to get a bad rap, deservedly or no. Because of Marx’s own religious atheism, it is assumed that all Marxists are atheists, but that is no more true than to say that all capitalists are Christian. Ayn Rand was one of the most staunch defenders of free market economic policies and she was as atheist as any socialist ever was. How then should we reconcile the religious with extreme political views?

You will see upon reading “A Labor Day Rosary” that one need not such a reconciliation where Jeff Rath is concerned. The content of the poem is not that religious (or is it?). But Catholics and other mainstream Christians will assuredly recognize the form. Written as a creed, following the same pattern as the Nicene Creed and the liturgical Prayers of the People, the poem makes its mark as a statement. A bold religious and political statement. Agree or disagree, you can’t ignore it. The political and the religious are intrinsically connected and Jeff Rath’s “A Labor Day Rosary” proves it:

A Labor Day Rosary

I
The Investor’s Creed
I believe in Capitalism,
creator of all profit here on earth,
and in Dow Jones, his only son,
our one true god,
who was conceived by greed,
born of the wealthy,
suffered under the Fair Wage Act,
crashed on Black Friday in ‘29,
was dead and buried, but rose again,
ascending to Wall Street,
and sitteth on the Governing Board
of the Stock Exchange,
from thence He shall come
to judge the rich and the poor
by different standards.
I believe in survival of the richest,
the legacy of the Robber Barons,
the Miracle of Compound Interest,
and in forgiving no debt,
no matter how small,
also in the resurrection of tax breaks,
and loopholes for the top two percent,
and in my wealth everlasting.

-Amen

II
Prayers Of The Workers
O lord, let me collapse
beneath the weight of all my debts
upon the rolling mill floor,
let great flaming slabs
of iron and steel
be dragged back and forth across my body
until my bones are crushed to dust,
until my dirt-stained flesh
is burnt to a fine white ash.

II
O mighty god of industry,
I beseech you,
in the sacred name of management:
take back the forty-hour work week,
lift from these burdened shoulders
the yoke of holiday pay,
time-and-a-half, medical plans,
workman’s compensation,
and all those other profit-robbing perks
our misguided forbears
extorted from the owners
through strikes and collective bargaining.

IV
Grant me the serenity
to swallow company policy
no matter how arbitrary,
the courage to support company decisions,
huge bonuses for management,
never-ending worker give-backs,
and the wisdom to realize
that any trouble from labor
will leave the company no choice
but to send my job overseas.

V
Hail, Big Bill Hayward, the IWW is with thee.
Blessed art thou among workers,
and blessed be the fruits of our labor.
Blessed Eugene Debs,
pray for us workers,
now and in the ever-increasing hours of our bondage
until we are robbed of all dignity
and driven early to our anonymous graves.

VI
Father of all that is profitable,
and therefore good,
I wish to confess my sins:
I have offered up my youth,
my health and my sweat,
I have sacrificed body parts -
even my children and my dreams -
upon the altar of the company’s goals.
But I have not done so with true humility,
with absolute acceptance of the bottom line.
I have harbored thoughts of resentment, Father,
and disillusionment.
Please forgive these hands and this heart,
and my misguided belief
that there should also be
a feeling of some personal value
in performing the work I do.

–Amen

Poetry need not be all neat and clean, nor easily definable. Even religious poetry. For the crux of all religions is to define the relationships between Man and God and between Man and Man. Some religions place more emphasis on the former while others stress the latter. Even within the same religion, religious thinkers may put more weight on the horizontal than the vertical, or vice-versa. At any rate, religious poetry has one obligation: To capture the spirit of its author within the definitions of one of these categories. Jeff Rath’s “A Labor Day Rosary” does that perfectly.

“A Labor Day Rosary” is one poem in the collection of poems titled The Waiting Room at the End of the World by Jeff Rath. Read a review here.

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