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Sherwood Anderson
Over my city Chicago a singer arises to sing.
I greet thee, hoarse and terrible singer, half man, half bird, strong, winged one.
I see you float in cold bleak winds,
Your wings burned by the fires of furnaces,
In all your cries so little that is beautiful,
Only the fact that you have risen out of the din and roar to float and wait and point the way to song.
Back of your grim city, singer, the long flat fields.
Corn that stands up in orderly rows, full of purpose.
As you float and wait, uttering your hoarse cries
I see new beauties in the standing corn,
And dream of singers yet to come,
When you and your rude kind, choked by the fury of your furnaces,
Have fallen dead upon this coal heap here.
Into the furnace let me go alone;
Stay you without in terror of the heat.
I will go naked in--for thus ’tis sweet--
Into the weird depths of the hottest zone.
I will not quiver in the frailest bone,
You will not note a flicker of defeat;
My heart shall tremble not its fate to meet,
My mouth give utterance to any moan.
The yawning oven spits forth fiery spears;
Red aspish tongues shout wordlessly my name.
Desire destroys, consumes my mortal fears,
Transforming me into a shape of flame.
I will come out, back to your world of tears,
A stronger soul within a finer frame.
I watched the workers in steel,
The Pit-like glow of the furnace,
The rivers of molten metal,
The tremulous rumble of cranes,
The throb of the Thor-like hammers
On sullen and resonant anvils!
I saw the half-clad workers
Twisting earth's iron to their use,
Shaping the steel to their thoughts;
And, in some way, out of the fury
And the fires of mortal passion,
It seemed to me,
In some way, out of the torture
And tumult of inchoate Time,
The hammer of sin is shaping
The soul of man!