as he drew the silhouettes
against the vast
machinery, suspending them,
haggard, bent
in a direction that was not
a direction,
for the stairs and bridges, ladders and catwalks
swaying
over danger,
over chasm and
damage, had in truth
no exit or entry.
Those beings embodied
the thrown existence
of the living in an iron world.
Who, then, can say we should lift
our faces to the light’s
slow filter,
and trace the funnel back to its fiery
source and be
glad, and be glad?
from The Paris Review