Maxwell Bodenheim

From “Charcoals”

THERE was an unsightly arm

And a cupped hand with three crusted fingers.

The hand sank into earth and bulged with it:

Then swung aloft in sudden exaltation….

And the seamy, blotched man beside me said:

“I’ve stood here for two hours watching that steam-shovel—

Can’t seem to get enough of it.”

I stood for hours, but I did not see the shovel.

I saw the man in smirched blue

Jerking a rope at the precise moment

When the laden hand dipped over a freight-car—

His strained wet face, and his eyes pressed to specks.

I saw the knotted-up man at the engine,

His face dead and dented like old tin.

(Life to him is the opening and closing of levers,

And heavy sleep.)

When I walked away the two men were fixed paintings

In the little art-gallery of my mind,

Where portraits are weighed well before admitted….

The steam-shovel?—I had forgotten it.