My father: all he wanted was a little,
Just a little, peace & quiet.
The War, that so-called "Good War,"
Had given him neither. And afterwards,
The peace & quiet he sought
Was mainly for his own turbulent, disquiet mind.
He spent his post-war years in the building trades,
Employed by The Brothers Levitt—
Shrewd, Semitic Kings of Suburbia--
Leading the single-family housing boom.
He earned our daily bread
Hammering nails & sawing two-by-fours,
No longer blowing up bridges, or killing Nazis,
The Construction Site: far from quiet dawn to dusk,
Creating daily new acoustic trauma,
Canceling out all hope of either peace or quiet.
Given the cutthroat competition for jobs,
He learned a new kind of stress, as more &
More vets--soldiers & survivors like him--
Coming home, anxious to get on with the
Business of life, scrambled for paychecks.
He also learned sarcasm, his cynicism
Masking a failure to cope with Cold War hysteria.
And then out of nowhere came labor saving,
Electric tools, like the Skill saw, LORD OF CACOPHONY.
Decibels: whining, screeching & shrill.
No Quiet. No Peace.