In Harness

I     The foreman's head     slowly circling...     White rims     under yellow disks of eyes....     Gold hairs     starting out of a blond scowl...     Hovering... disappearing... recurring...     the foreman's head.     Droning of power-machines...     droning of girl with adenoids...     Arms flapping with a fin-like motion     under sun burning down through a sky-light like a glass lid.     Light skating on the rims of wheels...     boring in gimlet points.     Needles flickering     fierce white threads of light     fine as a wasp's sting.     Light in sweat-drops brighter than eyes     and calico-pallid faces     and bodies throwing off smells -     and the air a bloated presence pressing on the walls     and the silence a compressed scream.     Allons enfants de la patrie -     Electric... piercing... shrill as a fife     the voice of a little Russian     breaks out of the shivered circle.     Another voice rises... another and another     leaps like flame to flame.     And life - surging, clamorous, swarming like a rabble              crazily fluttering ragged petticoats -     comes rushing back into torpid eyes     like suddenly yielded gates.     The girl with adenoids     rocks on her hams.     A torrent of song     strains at her throat,     gurgles, rushes, gouges her blocked pipes.     Her feet beat a wild tattoo -     head flung back and pelvis lifting     to the white body of the sun.     Mates now, these two -     goddess and god....     Marchons!     Only the power machines drone     with metallic docility     under the flaxen head of the foreman     poised like an amazed gull.     II     To-day     little French merchant men     with pointed beards     and fat American merchant men     without any beards     drive to a feast of buttered squabs.     The band... accoutered and neatly caparisoned...              plays the Marseillaise....     And I think of a wild stallion... newly caught...     flanks yet taut and nostrils spread     to the smell of a racing mare,     hitched to a grocer's cart.