Chapter IV

Three bent women and a child
Stoop before the steel-mill gate
As though the morning’s ghastly murmur
Washed against them in a wave
Stiffening them into resisting curves.
One is old and floridly misshapen.
Years have melted out within her frame,
Flooding her with lukewarm loves.
The wrinkles on her flabby face
Are like a faded scrawl of pain
Scattered by the flesh on which it rests.
Her frayed shawl hanging unaware of her
Is a symbol of her heart.
The woman standing at her side
Is tall and like a slanting scarecrow
Coldly jerking in the morning’s glare.
Only when she lifts a bony hand
Tapping life against her face,
Does the image disappear.
Dead dreams dangle in her heart,
Limply hanging from their rainbow sashes,
And whenever one sash trembles,
Then, she lifts a gnarled hand to her face
And tastes a moment of departing life.
Near her stands a slimly rigid woman
With an iron fear upon her bones.
A worn strait-jacket of lines
Cuts the dying youth upon her face.
The slender child beside her,
Buried within staidly murky clothes,
Glances frightenedly up at her mother:
Glances as one who dances to a gate
And fumbles for a latch that hides itself.
Then from the rusty-reveried steel-mill gate
An endless stream of men scatter out
Into the cool bewilderment of morning.
Upon their lips a limply child-like surrender
Curves out to the light, as though they felt
The presence of an unassuming strangeness.

SOUTH STATE STREET: CHICAGO