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.

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.

Pittsburgh, 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.

LOSERS

If I should pass the tomb of Jonah

I would stop there and sit for a while;

Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark
And came out alive after all.

I who have fiddled in a world on fire,

I who have done so many stunts not worth the doing.

I am looking for the grave of Sinbad too.
I want to shake his ghost-hand and say,
"Neither of us died very early, did we?"

And the last sleeping-place of Nebuchadnezzar—
When I arrive there I shall tell the wind:
"You ate grass; I have eaten crow—
Who is better off now or next year?"

Jack Cade, John Brown, Jesse James,

There too I could sit down and stop for a while.
I think I could tell their headstones:

"God, let me remember all good losers."

I could ask people to throw ashes on their heads
In the name of that sergeant at Belleau Woods,
Walking into the drumfires, calling his men,

"Come on, you . . . Do you want to live forever?"

Long ago I learned how to sleep,

WIND SONG

In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing

it away,

In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all,

In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, "Who, who are you?"

I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer afternoon and there I took a sleep lesson.

There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, I know how they trap the tricky winds.

Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine,

Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars:

Who, who are you?

Who can ever forget

listening to the wind go by

counting its money

and throwing it away?

PRIMER LESSON

Look out how you use proud words.

When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back.

They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud; they can't hear you callingLook out how you use proud words.

BROKEN-FACE GARGOYLES

All I can give you is broken-face gargoyles.

It is too early to sing and dance at funerals,

Though I can whisper to you I am looking for an undertaker humming a lullaby and throwing his feet in a swift and mystic buck-and-wing, now you see it and now you don't.

Fish to swim a pool in your garden flashing a speckled silver,

A basket of wine-saps filling your room with flame-dark for your eyes and the tang of valley orchards for your nose,

Such a beautiful pail of fish, such a beautiful peck of apples, I cannot bring you

now.

It is too early and I am not footloose yet.

I shall come in the night when I come with a hammer and saw.

I shall come near your window, where you look out when your eyes open in the morning,

And there I shall slam together bird-houses and bird-baths for wing-loose wrens and hummers to live in, birds with yellow wing tips to blur and buzz soft all

summer.

So I shall make little fool homes with doors, always open doors for all and each to run away when they want to.

I shall come just like that even though now it is early and I am not yet footloose, Even though I am still looking for an undertaker with a raw, wind-bitten face and a dance in his feet.

I make a date with you (put it down) for six o'clock in the evening a thousand years from now.

All I can give you now is broken-face gargoyles.

All I can give you now is a double gorilla head with two fish mouths and four eagle eyes hooked on a street wall, spouting water and looking two ways to the ends of the street for the new people, the young strangers, coming, coming, always coming.

I shall be eaten by gray creepers in a bunkhouse where no runners of the sun come and no dogs live.

And yet of all "and yets" this is the bronze strongest—

I shall keep one thing better than all else; there is the blue steel of a great star of early evening in it; it lives longer than a broken foot or any scar.

The broken foot goes to a hole dug with a shovel or the bone of a nose may whiten on a hilltop and yet-"and yet❞—

There is one crimson pinch of ashes left after all; and none of the shifting winds that whip the grass and none of the pounding rains that beat the dust know how to touch or find the flash of this crimson.

I cry to God to give me a broken foot, a scar, or a lousy death.

I who have seen the flash of this crimson, I ask God for the last and worst.

EARLY LYNCHING

Two Christs were at Golgotha.

One took the vinegar, another looked on.

One was on the cross, another in the mob.

One had the nails in his hands, another the stiff fingers holding a hammer driving nails.

There were many more Christs at Golgotha, many more thief pals, many many
more in the mob howling the Judean equivalent of "Kill Him! Kill Him!”
The Christ they killed, the Christ they didn't kill, those were the two at Golgotha.

Pity, pity, the bones of these broken ankles.
Pity, pity, the slimp of these broken wrists
The mother's arms are strong to the last.
She holds him and counts the heart drips.

The smell of the slums was on him,
Wrongs of the slums lit his eyes.
Songs of the slums wove in his voice

The haters of the slums hated his slum heart.

The leaves of a mountain tree,

Leaves with a spinning star shook in them,

Rocks with a song of water, water, over them,

Hawks with an eye for death any time, any time,

The smell and the sway of these were on his sleeves, were in his nostrils, his words.

The slum man they killed, the mountain man lives on.

PRECIOUS MOMENTS

Bright vocabularies are transient as rainbows.
Speech requires blood and air to make it.

Before the word comes off the end of the tongue,
While the diaphragms of flesh negotiate the word,
In the moment of doom when the word forms
It is born, alive, registering an imprint—

gone,

Afterward it is a mummy, a dry fact, done and
The warning holds yet: Speak now or forever hold your peace.
Ecce homo had meanings: Behold the man! Look at him!
Dying he lives and speaks!

MOIST MOON PEOPLE

The moon is able to command the valley tonight.

The green mist shall go a-roaming, the white river shall go a-roaming.

Yet the moon shall be commanding, the moon shall take a high stand on the sky.

When the cats crept up the gullies,

And the goats fed at the rim a-laughing,

When the spiders swept their rooms in the burr oaks,

And the katydids first searched for this year's accordions,

And the crickets began a-looking for last year's concertinas—

I was there, I saw that hour, I know God had grand intentions about it.

If not, why did the moon command the valley, the green mist and white river go a-roaming, and the moon by itself take so high a stand on the sky?

If God and I alone saw it, the show was worth putting on,

Yet I remember others were there, Amos and Priscilla, Axel and Hulda, Hank and Jo, Big Charley and Little Morningstar.

They were all there; the clock ticks spoke with castanet clicks.

BUNDLES

I have thought of beaches, fields,
Tears, laughter.

I have thought of homes put up-
And blown away.

I have thought of meetings and for
Every meeting a good-by.

I have thought of stars going alone,
Orioles in pairs, sunsets in blundering
Wistful deaths.

I have wanted to let go and cross over
To a next star, a last star.

I have asked to be left a few tears
And some laughter.

UPSTREAM

The strong men keep coming on,
They go down shot, hanged, sick, broken.