THEY scarred the hillside here to build a town: gaunt above slag and cinder, and despising the paint-splashed cabins, muddy pink and brown, the tipple looms — vast, black, uncompromising. All day the wagons lumber past: the wide squat wheels hub deep, the horses strained and still, the headlong rain pours down all day to hide the blackened stumps, the ulcerated hill. O beauty: all my life I loved you fiercely and even in this desolate place, where rain drips endlessly from all the eaves, and scarcely a leaf sprouts, and the earth is wracked with pain beauty is hammering, pounding through my brain. |