Mechanic

His fingers that are ten wrought steels
To touch the life of engines, wings, and wheels
Label his lore and lover’s history.
He knows her touch and every tracery
Of all the million dendrites of her wires,
Her whim with instruments, what sudden fires
Lurk in her dangerous mood, her monstrous rage —•
The life of steel that steel cannot quite cage;
Of engine, prop, and bomb. And last, her grace
And endless look of cloud and space.

He is her perfect lover. Dour and lean,
Father, historian, and her tiniest part.
An age will end when first his hands grow clean
And only blood flows through his metal heart.

He has a name. No matter. The machine
Whose part and function he was born
Is all his history need rest upon.
He mounts his path of glory every night
In watching her perform her perfect flight
With all her spinning angles opened wide
To spurn him on the distance of her ride.

And till she reappear out of her sky
No waitresses may lure him, no dice win,
Nor any neon doorway tempt to sin,
But rapt alone, he hears the juke box cry.