
          Ensley, Alabama: 1932
          By Beecher, JohnJohn Beecher
          Vol. 4, No. 3, 1982, p. 17
          
          
            The mills are down.
            The hundred stacks
            are shorn of their drifting fume. 
            The idle tracks
            rust . . . 
            Smeared red with the dust 
            of millions of
tons of smelted ore
            the furnaces loom--
            towering,
desolate tubes--
            smokeless and stark in the sun . . . 
            Powerhouse cubes 
            turbines hummed in, 
            platesteel
mains the airblast thrummed in 
            are quiet, and the sudden roar
            of blown-off steam . . . 
            At night 
            the needle
gleam 
            where the ladle poured at the pig machine, 
            the
deep smoulder of an iron run 
            and the spreading light 
            of molten slag over the sleeping town 
            are seen 
            no
more 
            now mills and men are down. 
          
          
             From Collected Poems, 1924-1974 by John
Beecher, New York: MacMillan, 1974.
          
        