Okay, so, I have a new job at a foundry. We sell to the mining industry. I happen to be the environmental engineer. Now that you know that, do not take this poem as anything but me playing around at 10pm. I like my job a lot, I consider myself to have a reasoned stewardship-based approach to the environment, and I am in a position to ensure that that gets done right at my work. It is a job I am proud to have, and one I like doing (so far, after 1 week).
With that, I give you the...
Foundry Poem
By Mark Miner
I think on summer trees and things
so warm and verdant, but life brings
before me vast concrete expanses,
no allure and no romances
glade to glen with naiads fair
just glass and steel, everywhere.
Dust and grit are my domain,
true Vulcan's son, with him I reign
and forge the means to plunder earth.
I guarantee the ruddy birth
of metals hard as adamant,
and hear their throbbing natal chant
while Furnace, orange and ripe with steel
gives vent to offspring so surreal,
and each in turn poured in a womb
of sand, a sculpted coffin-tomb,
then like Diana's leaping grace
from father Jove's fresh-cloven face
these myriad monsters, shaken out
and polished, heated, whirled about,
are loaded on Behemoth's back
behind his billow-bellow stack.
Away, away, to work and rest
and rust, in time, even the best
will die a slow, corrosive death
wasting under Time's hot breath
to populate the ground anew
and poison woods I never knew.
