Classic Poem

The steam-shovels had sunk their teeth
Through earth and rock until a hole
Yawned like a black hell underneath,
Like a coal-crater with all the coal
Torn out of her: the shovels bit
The stinking stony broth—and spit.

The Wops went up and down; they spilled
Cement like a groggy soup in chutes;
They mixed the mortar and they filled
The gash with it. . . . Short, swarthy brutes
They were, who reeked of rock and wet
Lime and accumulated sweat.

At first the work was tame enough:
Only another foundation like
Hundreds before and just as tough
To stand under a ten-ton spike
But it was different when a whir
Of steel announced the riveter.

One long lad of them took the crowd
As he straddled the girders and hooked the nuts
Livid-white hot: and we allowed
He was the lunatic for guts;
The sidewalk bleachers yelled as he
Speared a sizzler dizzily.

They got to call him the “Rivet Ruth”
That crisp corn shock of gusty hair,
That blue hawk-eye and devil of youth
Juggling with death on a treacherous stair,
Tipping his heart on a beam of steel
That made his pavement audience reel

The riveting hammers stuttered and kicked;
The ten-ton trestles whined in the winch;
And still this golden Icarus picked
The hissing rivets by half an inch,
Twirled and nailed them on the spin
Out of the air and rocked them in.

And one fine sun-splashed noon he lunged
Over the stark deadline—and missed!
Swung for an instant and then plunged
While the lone insane rivet hissed
Him all the way down from truss to truss
And dropped beside its Icarus!

The old strap-hanger thumbed his paper;
Feet shuffled sidewalks; traffic roared. . . .
Icarus had performed his caper—
Little New York minced by bored;
Leave the lads with the broken backs,
Soiled feathers and some melted wax!