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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE BOOK OF THE DEAD: ALLOY, by MURIEL RUKEYSER Poem Explanation Poet Analysis Poet's Biography Last Line: Disintergrated angel on these hills Subject(s): Furnaces; Landscape; Labor & Laborers; Kilns; Work; Workers | |||
This is the most audacious landscape.The gangster's stance with his gun smoking and out is not so vicious as this commercial field, its hill of glass. Sloping as gracefully as thighs, the foothills narrow to this, clouds over every town finally indicate the stored destruction. Crystalline hill: a blinded field of white murdering snow, seamed by convergent tracks; the travelling cranes reach for the silica. And down the track, the overhead conveyor slides on its cable to the feet of chimneys. Smoke rises, not white enough, not so barbaric. Here the severe flame speaks from the brick throat, electric furnaces produce this precious, this clean, annealing the crystals, fusing at last alloys. Hottest for silicon, blast furnaces raise flames, spill fire, spill steel, quench the new shape to freeze, tempering it to perfected metal. Forced through this crucible, a million men. Above this pasture, the highway passes those who curse the air, breathing their fear again. The roaring flowers of the chimney-stacks less poison, at their lips in fire, than this dust that is blown from off the field of glass; blows and will blow, rising over the mills, crystallized and beyond the fierce corrosion disintegrated angel on these hills. Camera at the crossing sees the city a street of wooden walls and empty windows, the doors shut handless in the empty street, and the deserted Negro standing on the corner. The little boy runs with his dog up the street to the bridge over the river where nine men are mending road for the government. He blurs the camera-glass fixed on the street. Railway tracks here and many panes of glass tin under light, the grey shine of towns and forests: in the commercial hotel (Switzerland of America) the owner is keeping his books behind the public glass. Post office window, a hive of private boxes, the hand of the man who withdraws, the woman who reaches her hand and the tall coughing man stamping an envelope. The bus station and the great pale buses stopping for food; April-glass-tinted, the yellow-aproned waitress; coast-to-coast schedule on the plateglass window. The man on the street and the camera eye: he leaves the doctor's office, slammed door, doom, any town looks like this one-street town. Glass,wood, and naked eye : the movie-house closed for the afternoon frames posters streaked with rain, advertise "Racing Luck" and "Hitch-Hike Lady." Whistling, the train comes from a long way away, slow, and the Negro watches it grow in the grey air, the hotel man makes a note behind his potted palm. Eyes of the tourist house, red-and-white filling station, the eyes of the Negro, looking down the track, hotel-man and hotel, cafeteria, camera. And in the beerplace on the other sidewalk always one's harsh night eyes over the beerglass follow the waitress and the yellow apron. The road flows over the bridge, Gamoca pointer at the underpass, opposite,Alloy, after a block of town. What do you want-a cliff over a city? A foreland, sloped to sea and overgrown with roses? These people live here. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AFTER WORKING SIXTY HOURS AGAIN FOR WHAT REASON by HICOK. BOB DAY JOB AND NIGHT JOB by ANDREW HUDGINS BIXBY'S LANDING by ROBINSON JEFFERS ON BUILDING WITH STONE by ROBINSON JEFFERS LINES FROM A PLUTOCRATIC POETASTER TO A DITCH-DIGGER by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS IN CALIFORNIA: MORNING, EVENING, LATE JANUARY by DENISE LEVERTOV |
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