Down into the earth you drive your load,
Into the building's bowels, where no-one sees
The dusty cardboard boxes being stowed.
When do you unpack and pack all these:
Entering as goods, displayed as owed
To chosen beauty, status, selfish ease.
Room and time outside where others go
Preserve the magic wonderland on show.
Down slender passages to hidden spaces
You trundle your container full of tools,
Maintaining disguised inner working places.
People go, and grim disorder rules
Until you scrape and scrub, remove all traces
Of day past, create stark renewals.
The fairy face of shops in shopping hours
Is founded on these secret, mundane powers.
Behind the scenes of crowded light you brood,
Counting numbers, adding lists. You keep
The profit holy, see the merit moved.
The electronic systems only leap
To answer touch command if you've pursued
The faults, repaired the logic twisted deep.
Invisible to those within the spell
This arcane sorcery's there in parallel.
2007
