LOLA RIDGE: The Song of Iron

Lola Ridge
(1873-1941)

 

THE SONG OF IRON

  I

  Not yet hast Thou sounded
  Thy clangorous music,
  Whose strings are under the mountains…
  Not yet hast Thou spoken
  The blooded, implacable Word…

  But I hear in the Iron singing–
  In the triumphant roaring of the steam and pistons pounding–
  Thy barbaric exhortation…
  And the blood leaps in my arteries, unreproved,
  Answering Thy call…
  All my spirit is inundated with the tumultuous passion of Thy Voice,
  And sings exultant with the Iron,
  For now I know I too am of Thy Chosen…

  Oh fashioned in fire–
  Needing flame for Thy ultimate word–
  Behold me, a cupola
  Poured to Thy use!

  Heed not my tremulous body
  That faints in the grip of Thy gauntlet.
  Break it… and cast it aside…
  But make of my spirit
  That dares and endures
  Thy crucible…
  Pour through my soul
  Thy molten, world-whelming song.

  … Here at Thy uttermost gate
  Like a new Mary, I wait…

  II

  Charge the blast furnace, workman…
  Open the valves–
  Drive the fires high…
  (Night is above the gates).

  How golden-hot the ore is
  From the cupola spurting,
  Tossing the flaming petals
  Over the silt and furnace ash–
  Blown leaves, devastating,
  Falling about the world…

  Out of the furnace mouth–
  Out of the giant mouth–
  The raging, turgid, mouth–
  Fall fiery blossoms
  Gold with the gold of buttercups
  In a field at sunset,
  Or huskier gold of dandelions,
  Warmed in sun-leavings,
  Or changing to the paler hue
  At the creamy hearts of primroses.

  Charge the converter, workman–
  Tired from the long night?
  But the earth shall suck up darkness–
  The earth that holds so much…
  And out of these molten flowers,
  Shall shape the heavy fruit…

  Then open the valves–
  Drive the fires high,
  Your blossoms nurturing.
  (Day is at the gates
  And a young wind…)

  Put by your rod, comrade,
  And look with me, shading your eyes…
  Do you not see–
  Through the lucent haze
  Out of the converter rising–
  In the spirals of fire
  Smiting and blinding,
  A shadowy shape
  White as a flame of sacrifice,
  Like a lily swaying?

  III

  The ore leaping in the crucibles,
  The ore communicant,
  Sending faint thrills along the leads…
  Fire is running along the roots of the mountains…
  I feel the long recoil of earth
  As under a mighty quickening…
  (Dawn is aglow in the light of the Iron…)
  All palpitant, I wait…

  IV

  Here ye, Dictators–late Lords of the Iron,
  Shut in your council rooms, palsied, depowered–
  The blooded, implacable Word?
  Not whispered in cloture, one to the other,
  (Brother in fear of the fear of his brother…)
  But chanted and thundered
  On the brazen, articulate tongues of the Iron
  Babbling in flame…

  Sung to the rhythm of prisons dismantled,
  Manacles riven and ramparts defaced…
  (Hearts death-anointed yet hearing life calling…)
  Ankle chains bursting and gallows unbraced…

  Sung to the rhythm of arsenals burning…
  Clangor of iron smashing on iron,
  Turmoil of metal and dissonant baying
  Of mail-sided monsters shattered asunder…

  Hulks of black turbines all mangled and roaring,
  Battering egress through ramparted walls…
  Mouthing of engines, made rabid with power,
  Into the holocaust snorting and plunging…

  Mighty converters torn from their axis,
  Flung to the furnaces, vomiting fire,
  Jumbled in white-heaten masses disshapen…
  Writhing in flame-tortured levers of iron…

  Gnashing of steel serpents twisting and dying…
  Screeching of steam-glutted cauldrons rending…
  Shock of leviathans prone on each other…
  Scaled flanks touching, ore entering ore…
  Steel haunches closing and grappling and swaying
  In the waltz of the mating locked mammoths of iron,
  Tasting the turbulent fury of living,
  Mad with a moment’s exuberant living!
  Crash of devastating hammers despoiling..
  Hands inexorable, marring
  What hands had so cunningly moulded…

  Structures of steel welded, subtily tempered,
  Marvelous wrought of the wizards of ore,
  Torn into octaves discordantly clashing,
  Chords never final but onward progressing
  In monstrous fusion of sound ever smiting on sound
       in mad vortices whirling…

  Till the ear, tortured, shrieks for cessation
  Of the raving inharmonies hatefully mingling…
  The fierce obligato the steel pipes are screaming…
  The blare of the rude molten music of Iron…

 

LOLA RIDGE POETRY
kempis poetry magazine

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