Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, NEW CHINA: THE IRON WORKS, by EUNICE TIETJENS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

NEW CHINA: THE IRON WORKS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The furnaces, the great steel furnaces, tremble and
Last Line: Tomorrow! Did they say?
Alternate Author Name(s): Head, Cloyd, Mrs.
Subject(s): China; Iron And Steel Industry


The furnaces, the great steel furnaces, tremble and glow; gigantic machinery
clanks, and in living iridescent streams the white-hot slag pours out.
This is tomorrow set in yesterday, the west imbedded in the east, a graft but
not a growth.

And you who walk beside me, picking your familiar way between the dynamos, the
cars, the piles of rails -- you too are of tomorrow, grafted with an alien
energy.
You wear the costume of the west; you speak my tongue as one who knows; you talk
casually of Sheffield, Pittsburgh, Essen . . .
You touch on Socialism, walk-outs, and the industrial population of the British
Isles.
Almost you might be one of us.

And then I ask:
"How much do those poor coolies earn a day, who take the place of carts?"
You smile and shrug.
"Eighteen coppers. Something less than eight cents in your money. They are not
badly paid. They do not die."
Again I ask:
"And is it true that you've a Yamen, a police judge, all your own?" Another
shrug and smile.
"Yes, he attends to all small cases of disorder. For larger crimes we pass the
offender over to the city courts."

* * *

"Conditions" you explain as we sit later with a cup of tea, "conditions here are
difficult."
Your figure has grown lax, your voice a little weary. You are fighting, I can
see, upheld by that strange graft of western energy.
Yet odds are heavy, and the Orient is in your blood. Your voice is weary.
"There are no skilled laborers," you say; "among the owners no co-operation.
It is like -- like working in a nightmare, here in China. It drags at me, it
drags" . . .

You bow me out with great civility.
The furnaces, the great steel furnaces, tremble and glow, gigantic machinery
clanks and in living iridescent streams the white-hot slag pours out.

Beyond, the gate of filth begins again.
A beggar rots and grovels, clutching at my skirt with leprous hands. A woman
sits sorting hog-bristles; she coughs and sobs.
The stench is sickening.

Tomorrow! did they say?





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