bulbous, squat basket with thick, crisscrossing weave; narrow mouth; slightly lopsided handle made from three bamboo sticks of varying thickness woven together with decorative knots; one side of handle has irregular twig Size: 19 3/8 × 11 1/8 × 10 13/16 in. (49.21 × 28.26 × 27.46 cm) Medium: Bamboo (hōbichiku or susudake), bamboo (madake?), rattan, lacquer
Uncredited Photographer Coal Miners having a Beer in a Pub After Their Shift, Cwmbach, Wales 1912
Back in 1912, coal miners were not provided with sinks or showers at a mine in order to clean the coal dust off themselves after they came out of the pit. For this reason, they’d still be coated in the coal dust that would kill many of them from the black lung it caused when they might stop at a pub for a drink with friends before they returned home. It was the unions that eventually brought both worker-controlled safety committees and sinks and showers for cleaning up to the mines.
You work with what you are given,
the red clay of grief,
the black clay of stubbornness going on after.
Clay that tastes of care or carelessness,
clay that smells of the bottoms of rivers or dust.
Each thought is a life you have lived or failed to live,
each word is a dish you have eaten or left on the table.
There are honeys so bitter
no one would willingly choose to take them.
The clay takes them: honey of weariness, honey of vanity,
honey of cruelty, fear.
This rebus—slip and stubbornness,
bottom of river, my own consumed life—
when will I learn to read it
plainly, slowly, uncolored by hope or desire?
Not to understand it, only to see.
As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty,
we become our choices.
Each yes, each no continues,
this one a ladder, that one an anvil or cup.
The ladder leans into its darkness.
The anvil leans into its silence.
The cup sits empty.