Circling the Book,
And the candles gleaming starkly
On the blotched-paper whiteness of his face,
Like a miswritten psalm...
Night by night
I hear his lifted praise,
Like a broken whinnying
Before the Lord's shut gate.

Sadie dresses in black.
She has black-wet hair full of cold lights
And a fine-drawn face, too white.
All day the power machines
Drone in her ears...
All day the fine dust flies
Till throats are parched and itch
And the heat--like a kept corpse--
Fouls to the last corner.

Then--when needles move more slowly on the cloth
And sweaty fingers slacken
And hair falls in damp wisps over the eyes--
Sped by some power within,
Sadie quivers like a rod...
A thin black piston flying,
One with her machine.

She--who stabs the piece-work with her bitter eye
And bids the girls: "Slow down--
You'll have him cutting us again!"