We peer inside the oven
The lamps welded with fat
The lamps welded with fat
This, the engine of the city
The cooking of brick
And pigiron, you must
Let your eyes adjust
To the greasy men
With their oily drivers,
Man and tool grunt
They are slick with rainbow
Dark and the heady inhale
Of petrol, of lung shale
Bald Men nightblack where
Only the whites of eyes
Show light in the skull
Like black candles
They pant and are wet
With a wax cloak of carbon sweat
The men call out to their metal
Eagle Fox Equus Panther Wolf
Steeling the names like golems
As if anything alive could live here
Where even the worms are baked
On the vulcanic bitumen
So mine deep and lode dark
The only stars are those bluewhite sparks
From the spluttering of minerals
And crude plastic moulds
Giving up; passing over their black gold
But this is not to say, this is
all bad
The world moves a little faster
A pocket grows
