The Line-Gang -- Robert Frost

Guest poem submitted by Yashashree Kulkarni:

(Poem #1535) The Line-Gang Here come the line-gang pioneering by, They throw a forest down less cut than broken. They plant dead trees for living, and the dead They string together with a living thread. They string an instrument against the sky Wherein words whether beaten out or spoken Will run as hushed as when they were a thought But in no hush they string it: they go past With shouts afar to pull the cable taught, To hold it hard until they make it fast, To ease away -- they have it. With a laugh, An oath of towns that set the wild at naught They bring the telephone and telegraph. -- Robert Frost

I came across this poem while browsing through a collection of Frost's poems
on the internet. What facinated me most about this poem is how Frost manages
to move back and forth, so effortlessly, between seemingly disjoint worlds -
the forest, the activities of the linemen, the world that'll come to exist
in the live wires and even the thoughts living in our brains as electrical
signals - and 'strings them together with a living thread', the poem.

Yashashree Kulkarni.