Page:The Poet in the Desert.djvu/38



The clash and clamor of steel-plates ;

The evil rattle of steel-cranes.

I am deaf with the bellowing of monsters which feed on

men. They belch their smoke against the resentful sky And below, in the steam, I see men naked, sweating like the damned ; Grimy alchemists, with wan, smutted faces. Who dully change dull iron to dull gold.

TRUTH: Slaves to the demons which they guide.

POET:

An iron world without a soul;

The patient sky above waiting ;

The patient men below waiting ;

The blue sky above forever listening, inviting, expectant ;

The tired men below forever listening, hopeful, expectant ;

The flaming sun above ordering abundance ;

The flaming hell below denying enough ;

Forever clamoring; forever devouring;

Devouring the men who are mates for mothers;

Fathers, steel-muscled, broad-chested, dominant ;

The women, mothers of children ;

The innocent children with white bodies, fluent,

Morning glories bearing the

Seeds of the unknowable Future.

Mothers, undulant, flexible ; crypts of the ages ; alabaster

vessels of life. In the dim dawn, before the whistles command, I see an army, ever hungry, never full ; They bend gray faces above their pauper bowls, And suck up eagerly Starvation's dole.

TRUTH: Your brothers, whom you have disinherited; Your sisters, whom you have destroyed.

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