Burnt coils of steel loom from collecting bins. In the wash room photographs of wives and lovers look down on the backs of men pale as shells. Brown wrists and black hands lather and shine in the light of one dim lamp, and blue shirts hang like the stilled hands of a deaf-mute. When the foreman sees his raw face in the mirror, he turns away, shy as a young girl, sick of iron and rust, the dead sun of the day's end. After washing, his wet hair gleams in the open door and he begins his dream of women in cool rooms.
Gusts seep through tin, making the thin music the men live by.
The ten-ton hoist drags its death chain. The sky is a gray drum, a dull hunger only the plains know. Like children at prayer, the men kneel to lace their shoes, touching the worn heels of a life. When they leave, the faces on their locker doors turn back to darkness. Each man shoulders the sun, carries it through the fields, the lighted streets.