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4 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-smoke and the blood of a man And the finished steel, chilled and blue.