Staircase Wit

for Matthew D’Occhio

From the French esprit d’escalier (noun): A witty remark thought of too

late, on the way home. Coined by French encyclopedist Denis Diderot.

We were arguing fitness—how to train

with a barbell, how much protein you need

when you puffed up your chest and proclaimed:

Nothing worth doing is easy, and I, so entranced

by that locker-room logic, agreed. Till a glance

at my life (or any worth living)

showed me how full of shit that sentiment is.

Nothing worth doing is easy? That would mean

every sunset I’ve watched, every dream,

every broadcast and movie that I’ve ever seen—

all the reams of second-rate fiction I’ve read,

every trusting young novice I’ve lured into bed—

All a waste! Life is hard, or should be, at least

That’s the credo of masochists, martyrs, and priests.

Nothing worth doing is easy. It’s what God

said to Adam: by the sweat of thy brow

shalt thou eat of the fields. So it stands even now,

the Protestant Ethic and Catholic Guilt hold us still—

noses to grindstones and shouldering ploughs.

I would know. The love of hard work is a family curse.

Grampa Jack, for the sake of a new garden shed,

hauled his concrete by hand (though the wheelbarrow worked)

till the strain burst his heart and he keeled over dead.

Nothing worth doing is easy, he’d said.

And the sins of that father survived in my own,

who once, in a rage, smashed the family phone

(It wouldn’t—or couldn’t—place a long-distance call).

Nothing’s simple, he grumbled, impatient and rankled

as he knelt with his tools, yellow paint, and white spackle,

and patched up the hole in the living room wall.

Of course, some things are hard. Nor would I—

a “privileged,” white, suburbanite male—deny

that the battles hard-fought or the accolades won

by those whose ambitions loom larger than mine

have—and should have—their place in the sun.

But make no mistake: this sick mandate to prize

only that which comes hard is at worst self-abuse;

at best, self-deceit. That way madness lies,

and twelve-hour days at labors you loathe

just to pay for coarse meals, a roof, and rough clothes.

If that’s what you want, why not barter

your life, with its first-world joys,

for the lot of another whose hardships hit harder?

Many do, and have done. Young Siddhartha

abandoned a kingdom. Saint Anthony, too.

Diogenes lived in a barrel. So can you.

Go and live among cynics, or sadhus, or saints.

Rejoice in their pain and their psalms.

Put to death all that’s earthly within you.

Live on locusts, wild honey, and alms.

Nothing worth doing is easy, as we’ve struggled to learn.

If you still buy that, Spartan friend, let me tell you:

in exchange for the boons you’ve received—but not earned—

I’ve a lifetime of ashes and sackcloth to sell you.