The Weaver

An ekphrastic poem inspired by Van Gogh's "Weaver."

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Back, forth
Hand up, hand down
The weaver stares ahead
His mind is as numb as his fingers
Back, forth
Up, down
His grandmother’s hands
Used to love their work
Beginning to end
Wool to cloth to clothes
She would give them to him
With a smile
And though she grew weary
She was glad to watch her hard work
Become worn with use.

Now the weaver does her work
Or so it would seem
He does it a hundredfold
Up, down
Back, forth
They called it revolutionary
But all real value has been lost
To a machine:
His work holds no love
His cloth sees no kin
It's sent far away
And even as he accepts too few coins from the driver
And watches the crates leave
He prepares to return inside
To begin again
Always again
Not for his grandchildren
But for the greedy maw of the market

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