Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw

in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? . . . in the dust, in the cool tombs?

Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns . . . tell me if the lovers are tell me if any get more than the

losers

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 evenings,
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 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.

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.

BLUE ISLAND INTERSECTION

Six street ends come together here.

They feed people and wagons into the center.

In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags, Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies.

Six ends of streets and no sleep for them all day.
The people and wagons come and go, out and in.
Triangles of banks and drug stores watch.
The policemen whistle, the trolley cars bump:
Wheels, wheels, feet, feet, all day.

In the false dawn when the chickens blink
And the east shakes a lazy baby toe at to-morrow,
And the east fixes a pink half-eye this way,
In the time when only one milk wagon crosses
These three streets, these six street ends,
It is the sleep time and they rest.

The triangle banks and drug stores rest.
The policeman is gone, his star and gun sleep.
The owl car blutters along in a sleep-walk.

CLEAN CURTAINS

New neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets.

The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nun's bonnet.

One way was an oyster pail factory, one way they made candy, one way paper boxes, strawboard cartons.

The warehouse trucks shook the dust of the ways loose and the wheels whirled dust-there was dust of hoof and wagon wheel and rubber tire-dust of police