He said the two brothers had quarreled over a woman, that they’d tended machines side-by-side without speaking for over thirty years

till the younger one died,

the woman having remained with neither:

tool and die makers, not the sons of Oedipus, laid this odious tale on my father’s lips, and so to mine.

What can it mean, Father, other than

that some men

are incorrigibly stupid?

thought
on its elbows
machinist’s stare