Workers by Peter Kennard
By Owen Gallagher
Workers are downing tools.
They’re downing picks and shovels,
hods and drills, leaving conveyor belts
and tills. They’re downing clipboards
and keyboards, scalpels, and stethoscopes,
leaving classrooms, wards, and kitchens.
Workers are downing tools.
They have no leaders to dead-end them.
No flag to divide them.
They are locking arms across oceans.
Refuse collectors. Care workers.
Warehouse packers. Dockers.
Farm workers. Cleaners. Drivers…
Armed with, NO!
Workers are downing tools.
No one dresses kings and queens.
No one cleans parliaments.
Power has been cut on trading floors.
The engines in private jets are silent.
Workers are forging themselves
into one body, one vast pair of lungs.
Nothing moves without them.
Nothing ever has.
