What is life? Making toilets clean. This is what we do,
And the veneer of vanity becomes thicker
As we move up the totem, standing on this task.
Cleaning solves the old, and discovers the new.
Vain poet, the beauty you praise is not even a flicker;
There’s nothing moral or formal to know—do not ask
Useless questions. A testament,
A love, a landscape painting, a music, a law,
Exist impermanently, a paean to clean,
And if each offends, because secretly we know nothing’s permanent,
We say it’s personal taste, or poor method, but every flaw
Is ours. Vanity makes us blind and mean
To life’s true nature; the swift janitor
Is judge, poet, builder. Clean is all we are.
Smooth, uncluttered, this face in stone.
His majesty’s monument in the wilderness all alone.
