Thiel College - Endymon Yearbook (Greenville, PA)

Page 10 text:

II. If you have ever had to do with steel: The open-hearth, the blooming-mill, the cranes Howling under a nity-ton load, trains Yowling in the black pits where you reel Groggily across a sluice of orange hre, a sheet Tongued from the conduits that bubble blue green, if Ever you have got a single whiff Out of Bessemeids belly, felt the drag And drip and curdle of steel spit hissing against hot slag: If ever you have had to eat One hundred and thirty degrees of solid heat, Then screwed the hose to the spigot, drowned in steam. Dartecl back when the rods kicked up a stream O17 fluid steel and had to duck the ladle that slobbered over, and scream Your throat raw to get your Goddam! through- Then I ani talking to you. Steve did that for ten years with quiet eyes, And body down to the belt caked wet Wiith hardening cinder splash and stiffening sweat And whatever else there is that clots and never utterly dries ll-le packed the mud and dolomite, made back-wall, I-lerded the heat, and placed his throw in tall Terrible arcs behind smoked glasses, and watchedit fall Heavy and -straight and true, Wihile the blower kept the gas at a growl and the brew Yelled red and the inelter hollered Hkleow l and you raveled Her out and the thick soup gargled and you traveled Like the devil to get out from undei '... Wlell, Steve For ten years of abdorninal heft and heave VVorked steel. So muchfor that. And after Ten years of night shifts, fourteen hours each, The Bessemers burn your nerves up, bleach Rebellion out of your bones: and laughter 6

Page 9 text:

Steady now . . . That was his wife Making' that small queer inarticulate sound Like a knifeg Steady there ... I ,et him slip easily into the ground: Do not look at her, She is lighting for breath . . She a foreigner . . Polak . . . like him . . . she cannot understand . . It is hard . . . Leave her alone with death :Xml a shovelful of sand. HU the pity of it, the pity of it, Iago ! . Christ, what a hell ls packed into that line! Each syllable Bleecls when you say it . . . No matter: Chicago ls a 'lar cry from Cracow: A And anyhow What have Poles To rlo with such extraneous things as hearts and souls? 'llhere is nothing here to beat the breast over, Nothing' to relish the curious, Not a smell of the romantic: this fellow Was hardly your yearning lover ' l'i1'lltSi1'ZlllC1lZ no punchinellog lilut just a hunky in a steel mill. XfVhy then fuss Because his heavy Slavic 'face went yellow VX'itl1 the roaring' furnace dust? Now that he is in '.If'he cool sweet crush of dirt, to hell with your sobbing violin Your sanctimonious 'cellol l.et the mill bellow! 7

Page 11 text:

Sucked clean out Ofli your guts becomes More dead than yesterday's feet moving to yesterday's drums. . And so they called him Dummy, The whole gang lfrom pit' boss down to the last mud-slinger cursed t And squirted tobacco juice in a hot and mixed harangue Ol Slovene, Serb, Dutch, Dago, Russian, and-worst- English as hard and toothless as a skull. And Steve stared straight ahead of him and his eyes were dull. Anna was Steve's little woman W'ho labored bitterly enough, Making children of stern and tragic sutff And a rapture that was hammered rough, Spilling steel into their spines, yet keeping them wistful and human . . . Anna had her work to do W'ith cooking and cleaning And washing the window curtains white as new, Washing them till they wore through: For her the white curtains had a meaning- And starching them white against the savage will Ol' the grim dust belching incessantly out of the mill: Soaking and scrubbing and ironing against that gritty reek Until her head swam and her knees went weak And she could hardly speak. A terrible unbeaten purpose persisted: Color crying against a colorless world! White against black at the windows flung up, unfurled! Candles and candle light! 'llhe llags of a lonely little woman twisted Out ol' her hunger for cool clean beauty, her hunger for white!- 'llhese were her banners and this was her hght! No matter how tired she was, however she would ache ln every nerve, she must boil the meat and bake The bread, and the curtains must go up white-for Steve's sake! 7 ,