“The Road Not Taken” is the best-known poem by Robert Frost (1874-1963), and we all have a road not taken. “Out, out—”, one of my wife’s favourite poems, is also a great poem. It tells of a dreadful accident, the sort of thing that happens to somebody somewhere every day. The scene is rural Vermont, and men were using a buzz saw to cut wood, “sweet scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.” Little could be more peaceful, and at the end of the afternoon the men give a boy a chance on the saw. When distracted by something as normal as his sister saying “Supper,” the boy cuts off his hand. His first response is a “rueful laugh,” but despite the doctor coming the boy exsanguinates. It’s the last line and a half that sticks in your head: “And they, since they/
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.” For now we are “not the one dead,” but one day we will be. We must press on with our lives. It’s not brave, it’s just what life demands. I read somewhere that Frost said something like “All I know is that life goes on.”

“Out, out—” by Robert Frost

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behind the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,
As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—
He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’
So. But the hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.
No one believed. They listened at his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.