Sky Scraper

ALL winter I have watched a building grow
From its foundations, drilled into the rock,
Up through a space where nothing was but air
Which it embraced with girders to the top.

On naked I-beams, ten floors above the street
In the winter wind, I’ve seen the riveters
Perform their ritual, — guard their bowls of fire.
Toss rivets like meteors in such accurate arcs
A man could catch them in a ten-inch bucket,
And when they’d tried the fit of every socket,
Seal up each joint in spurts of showering sparks.

And as the skeleton kept getting higher,
Its dark interior grew more alive:
It swarmed with men, climbing on its ladders.
Running along its ribs, and at its heart
Was Light: violence of acetylene torches
Blue-bright as stars, the brilliant rocket-rain
Of welders’ arcs, the flowing orange flame
Of oil in barrels, the planet-shine of bulbs.

And seeing the foreman in the fog-gray sky
Unrolling his wide blueprints in the wind,
Nothing above him but the singing wire
Of cables, the arm of an obedient crane,
(Beside him, chimney-smoke and one sharp spire)
I have marveled at man, — at his commanding brain
Precisely disposing mortar, brick and steel, —
And marveled that his building should require
The binding force of immaterial Fire.