Thiel College - Endymon Yearbook (Greenville, PA)

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 ,

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 12 text:

One thing was Certain: That John and Stanley and Helen and Marv and the baby Steven Must be kept out of the mills and the mill life, even ll it meant that her man and she would break Under the brunt of it: she had talked it through with him IX hundred times . . . l,et her eyeballs split, her head swim The window must have its Curtain ! III. Lately Steve had stopped talking altogether X-Vhen he slumped in with his dinner pail and heavily lflunehed over his food. So Anna and the children let him bei She was afraid to ask him why or whether As he sat with his eyes glued On vacancy. So Anna and the children let him brood. Only sometimes he would suddenly look at them and her In a ghastly hxed blur Till a vast nausea of terror and compassion stood Blunclering in her heart and swarming in her blood- And she shivered and knew somehowthat it was not good. And then it happened: Spring had come 'l',ike the silver needle-note of a hte, Like a white plume and a green lanee and a glittering knife And a jubilant drum. But Steve did not hear the earth hum: Under the earth he could feel, merely the 'fever And the shock of roots oilf steel foreverg April had no business with the pit Or the people-call thenrpeople-who breathed in it. The mill was Steve's huge harlot and his head Lay between breasts of steel on a steel bed. l,.oeked in a steel sleep and his hands were riveted. s