Custodians
Retired from other trades, they wore
Work clothes again to mop the johns
And feed the furnace loads of coal.
Their roughened faces matched the bronze
Of the school bell the nun would swing
To start the day. They limped but smiled,
Explored the secret, oldest nooks:
The steeple’s clock, dark attics piled
With inkwell desks, the caves beneath
The stage on Bingo night. The pastor
Bowed to the powers in their hands:
Fuses and fire alarms, the plaster
Smoothing a flaking wall, the keys
To countless locks. They fixed the lights
In the crawl space above the nave
And tolled the bells for funeral rites.
Maintain what dead men made. Time blurs
Their scripted names and well-waxed floors,
Those keepers winking through the years
And whistling down the corridors.
Work clothes again to mop the johns
And feed the furnace loads of coal.
Their roughened faces matched the bronze
Of the school bell the nun would swing
To start the day. They limped but smiled,
Explored the secret, oldest nooks:
The steeple’s clock, dark attics piled
With inkwell desks, the caves beneath
The stage on Bingo night. The pastor
Bowed to the powers in their hands:
Fuses and fire alarms, the plaster
Smoothing a flaking wall, the keys
To countless locks. They fixed the lights
In the crawl space above the nave
And tolled the bells for funeral rites.
Maintain what dead men made. Time blurs
Their scripted names and well-waxed floors,
Those keepers winking through the years
And whistling down the corridors.
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2014 by David Livewell, “Custodians,” from Southwest Review (Vol. 99, no. 2, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of David Livewell and Southwest Review. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.