Richard Schletty

Background music: André van Haren. http://www.andrevanharen.com

Text: “The Quarry” is a philosophical and secular poem from the Polish poet Karol Wojtyla, also known by the name Pope John Paul II.

Melody and baritone voice: Richard Schletty, http://www.schlettysound.com

© 2007, André van Haren and Richard Schletty

Wojtyla was arrested in 1942, but was released because of his job at the quarry, perhaps escaping death because of the value of his muscle, even as others deemed “less valuable” died around him.

The Quarry by Karol Wojtyla

He wasn’t alone.
His muscles grew into the flesh of the crowd, energy their pulse,
As long as they held a hammer, as long as his feet felt the ground.
And a stone smashed his temples and cut through his heart’s chamber.
They took his body and walked in a silent line
Toil still lingered about him, a sense of wrong.
They wore gray blouses, boots ankle-deep in mud.
In this, they showed the end.
How violently his time halted: the pointers on the low voltage dials jerked, then dropped to zero again.
White stone now within him, eating into his being, taking over enough of him to turn him into stone.
Who will lift up that stone, unfurl his thoughts again under the cracked temples?
So plaster cracks on the wall.
They laid him down, his back on a sheet of gravel.
His wife came, worn out with worry; his son returned from school
Should his anger now flow into the anger of others?
It was maturing in him through his own truth and love
Should he be used by those who came after, deprived of substance, unique and deeply his own?
The stones on the move again; a wagon bruising the flowers.
Again the electric current cuts deep into the walls.
But the man has taken with him the world’s inner structure, where the greater the anger, the higher the explosion of love.