Exiles: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men , 1995
Give me, for my life,
all lives,
give me all the pain
of everyone,
I’m going to turn it into hope.
Give me
all the joys,
even the most secret,
because otherwise
how will these things be known?
I have to tell them,
give me
the labors
of everyday,
for that’s what I sing.
― Pablo Neruda, Sublime Blue: Selected Early Odes
Labor Day, 2022. In honor of this day honoring organized labor and workers in general, I am getting to work this morning.
It’s what I do.
It’s my job, my task, my toil, my duty, my purpose, my privilege, my joy.
Maybe my salvation. It certainly has been in the past.
It’s what I do.
I don’t consider my work a prison sentence but here’s a version of an old prison work song, Make’s a Long Time Man Feel Bad, performed by the folk duo Ian & Sylvia. A long time man would be someone with a very long prison sentence to serve. Maybe a life sentence. Or longer.
Now that’s labor…
Redtree Times 
I’ve never heard this version — quite different from most of what I associate with Ian & Sylvia. I had to smile at the line “Alberta, let your hair hang long.” There’s a nice, perhaps unintended association there with a couple of Canadian folksingers.