On the brazen, articulate tongues of the Iron
Babbling in flame...

Sung to the rhythm of prisons dismantled,
Manacles riven and ramparts defaced...
(Hearts death-anointed yet hearing life calling...)
Ankle chains bursting and gallows unbraced...

Sung to the rhythm of arsenals burning...
Clangor of iron smashing on iron,
Turmoil of metal and dissonant baying
Of mail-sided monsters shattered asunder...

Hulks of black turbines all mangled and roaring,
Battering egress through ramparted walls...
Mouthing of engines, made rabid with power,
Into the holocaust snorting and plunging...

Mighty converters torn from their axis,
Flung to the furnaces, vomiting fire,
Jumbled in white-heaten masses disshapen...
Writhing in flame-tortured levers of iron...

Gnashing of steel serpents twisting and dying...
Screeching of steam-glutted cauldrons rending...
Shock of leviathans prone on each other...
Scaled flanks touching, ore entering ore...
Steel haunches closing and grappling and swaying
In the waltz of the mating locked mammoths of iron,
Tasting the turbulent fury of living,