Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, September 16th 1963

 

Puncture the mud, the iron pours out

 

tongue of fire, not a word

 

stays still but breaks along the channels

 

pressed in the cast floor’s sand.

 

Now it’s pigs suckling at the sow’s

 

iron teats, so many children blind

 

to the air and world that harden them.

 

A gift. Dark come on. When

 

the slag-man pulls the plug, fire

 

explodes, its violent, molten light

 

bathes the irons, a glow on their spines

 

like stained glass or twilight fades

 

on headstones’ crests, row on row on row