Smoke and Steel Smoke of the fields in spring is one, Smoke of the leaves in autumn another. Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel, They all go up in a line with a smokestack, Or they twist . . . in the slow twist . . . of the wind. If the north wind comes they run to the south. If the west wind comes they run to the east. By this sign all smokes know each other. Smoke of the fields in spring and leaves in autumn, Smoke of the finished steel, chilled and blue, By the oath of work they swear: "I know you." Hunted and hissed from the center Deep down long ago when God made us over, Deep down are the cinders we came from-- You and I and our heads of smoke. . . . Some of the smokes God dropped on the job Cross on the sky and count our years And sing in the secrets of our numbers; Sing their dawns and sing their evening Sing an old log-fire song: You may put the damper up, You may put the damper down, The smoke goes up the chimney just the same. Smoke of a city sunset skyline, Smoke of a country dusk horizon-- They cross on the sky and count our years. . . . Smoke of a brick-red dust Winds on a spiral Out of the stacks For a hidden and glimpsing moon. This, said the bar-iron shed to the blooming mill, This is the slang of coal and steel. The day-gang hands it to the night-gang, The night-gang hands it back. Stammer at the slang of this-- Let us understand half of it. In the rolling mills and sheet mills, In the harr and boom of the blast fires, The smoke changes its shadow And men change their shadow; A nigger, a wop, a bohunk changes. A bar of steel--it is only Smoke at the heart of it, smoke and the blood of a man. A runner of fire ran in it, ran out, ran somewhere else, And left--and the blood of a man And the finished steel, chilled and blue. So fire runs in, runs out, runs somewhere else again, And the bar of steel is a gun, a wheel, a nail, a shovel, A rudder under the sea, a steering-gear in the sky; And always dark in the heart and through it, Smoke and the blood of a man. Pittsburg, Youngstown, Gary--they make their steel with men. In the blood of men and the ink of chimneys The smoke nights write their oaths: Smoke into steel and blood into steel; Homestead, Braddock, Birmingham, they make their steel with men. Smoke and blood is the mix of steel. The birdmen drone in the blue; it is steel a motor sings and zooms. . . . Steel barb-wire around The Works. Steel guns in the holsters of the guards at the gates of The Works. Steel ore-boats bring the loads clawed from the earth by steel, lifted and lugged by arms of steel, sung on its way by the clanking clam-shells. The runners now, the handlers now, are steel; they dig and clutch and haul; they hoist their automatic knuckles from job to job; they are steel making steel. Fire and dust and air fight in the furnaces; the pour is timed, the billets wriggle; the clinkers are dumped: Liners on the sea, skyscrapers on the land; diving steel in the sea, climbing steel in the sky. . . . Finders in the dark, you Steve with a dinner bucket, you Steve clumping in the dusk on the sidewalks with an evening paper for the woman and kids, you Steve with your head wondering where we all end up-- Finders in the dark, Steve: I hook my arm in cinder sleeves; we go down the street together; it is all the same to us; you Steve and the rest of us end on the same stars; we all wear a hat in hell together, in hell or heaven. Smoke nights now, Steve. Smoke, smoke, lost in the sieves of yesterday; Dumped again to the scoops and hooks today. Smoke like the clocks and whistles, always. Smoke nights now. To-morrow something else. . . . Luck moons come and go: Five men swim in a pot of red steel. Their bones are kneaded into the bread of steel: Their bones are knocked into coils and anvils And the sucking plungers of sea-fighting turbines. Look for them in the woven frame of a wireless station. So ghosts hide in steel like heavy-armed men in mirrors. Peepers, skulkers--they shadow-dance in laughing tombs. They are always there and they never answer. One of them said: "I like my job, the company is good to me, America is a wonderful country." One: "Jesus, my bones ache; the company is a liar; this is a free country, like hell." One: "I got a girl, a peach; we save up and go on a farm and raise pigs and be the boss ourselves." And the others were roughneck singers a long ways from home. Look for them back of a steel vault door. They laugh at the cost. They lift the birdmen into the blue. It is steel a motor sings and zooms. In the subway plugs and drums, In the slow hydraulic drills, in gumbo or gravel, Under dynamo shafts in the webs of armature spiders, They shadow-dance and laugh at the cost. . . . The ovens light a red dome. Spools of fire wind and wind. Quadrangles of crimson sputter. The lashes of dying maroon let down. Fire and wind wash out the slag. Forever the slag gets washed in fire and wind. The anthem learned by the steel is: Do this or go hungry. Look for our rust on a plow. Listen to us in a threshing-engine razz. Look at our job in the running wagon wheat. . . . Fire and wind wash at the slag. Box-cars, clocks, steam-shovels, churns, pistons, boilers, scissors Oh, the sleeping slag from the mountains, the slagheavy pig-iron will go down many roads. Men will stab and shoot with it, and make butter and tunnel rivers, and mow hay in swaths, and slit hogs and skin beeves, and steer airplanes across North America, Europe, Asia, round the world. Hacked from a hard rock country, broken and baked in mills and smelters, the rusty dust waits Till the clean hard weave of its atoms cripples and blunts the drills chewing a hole in it. The steel of its plinths and flanges is reckoned, O God, in one-millionth of an inch. . . . Once when I saw the curves of fire, the rough scarf women dancing, Dancing out of the flues and smoke-stacks flying hair of fire, flying feet upside down; Buckets and baskets of fire exploding and chortling, fire running wild out of the steady and fastened ovens; Sparks cracking a harr-harr-huff from a solar-plexus of rock-ribs of the earth taking a laugh for themselves; Ears and noses of fire, gibbering gorilla arms of fire, gold mud-pies, gold bird-wings, red jackets riding purple mules, scarlet autocrats tumbling from the humps of camels, assassinated czars straddling vermillion balloons; I saw then the fires flash one by one: good-by: then smoke, smoke; And in the screens the great sisters of night and cool stars, sitting women arranging their hair, Waiting in the sky, waiting with slow easy eyes, waiting and half-murmuring: "Since you know all and I know nothing, tell me what I dreamed last night." . . . Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain, in only a flicker of wind, are caught and lost and never known again. A pool of moonshine comes and waits, but never waits long: the wind picks up loose gold like this and is gone. A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine; sleeps slant-eyed a million years, sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths, a shirt of gathering sod and loam. The wind never bothers . . . a bar of steel. The wind picks only . . . pearl cobwebs . . . pools of moonshine. People Who Must I painted on the roof of a skyscraper. I painted a long while and called it a day's work. The people on a corner swarmed and the traffic cop's whistle never let up all afternoon. They were the same as bugs, many bugs on their way-- Those people on the go or at a standstill; And the traffic cop a spot of blue, a splinter of brass, Where the black tides ran around him And he kept the street. I painted a long while And called it a day's work. Omaha Red barns and red heifers spot the green grass circles around Omaha--the farmers haul tanks of cream and wagon loads of cheese. Shale hogbacks across the river at Council Bluffs--and shanties hang by an eyelash to the hill slants back around Omaha. A span of steel ties up the kin of Iowa and Nebraska across the yellow, big-hoofed Missouri River. Omaha, the roughneck, feeds armies, Eats and swears from a dirty face. Omaha works to get the world a breakfast. Crabapple Blossoms Somebody's little girl--how easy to make a sob story over who she was once and who she is now. Somebody's little girl--she played once under a crabapple tree in June and the blossoms fell on the dark hair. It was somewhere on the Erie line and the town was Salamanca or Painted Post or Horse's Head. And out of her hair she shook the blossoms and went into the house and her mother washed her face and her mother had an ache in her heart at a rebel voice,"I don't want to." Somebody's little girl--forty little girls of somebodies splashed in red tights forming horseshoes, arches, pyramids--forty little show girls, ponies, squabs. How easy a sob story over who she once was and who she is now--and how the crabapple blossoms fell on her dark hair in June. Let the lights of Broadway spangle and splatter and the taxis hustle the crowds away when the show is over and the street goes dark. Let the girls wash off the paint and go for their midnight sandwiches--let 'em dream in the morning sun, late in the morning, long after the morning papers and the milk wagons-- Let 'em dream long as they want to . . . of June somewhere on the Erie line . . . and crabapple blossoms. Crapshooters Somebody loses whenever somebody wins. This was known to the Chaldeans long ago. And more; somebody wins whenever somebody loses. This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans. They take it heaven's hereafter is an eternity of crap games where they try their wrists years and years and no police come with a wagon; the game goes on forever. The spots on the dice are the music signs of the songs of heaven here. God is Luck: Luck is God: we are all bones the High Thrower rolled: some are two spots, some double sixes. The myths are Phoebe, Little Joe, Big Dick. Hope runs high with a; Huh, seven--huh, come seven This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans. Soup I saw a famous man eating soup. I say he was lifting a fat broth Into his mouth with a spoon. His name was in the newspapers that day Spelled out in tall black headlines And thousands of people were talking about him. When I saw him, He sat bending his head over a plate Putting soup in his mouth with a spoon. |
Last updated: September 20, 2020