Go and stack in a high pile all the babies that die in Christian

Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Chicago in one year

because aforesaid babies haven’t had enough good milk;

On top the pile put all the little early babies pulled from mothers

willing to be tom with abortions rather than bring more

children into the world—

Jesus! that would make a front page picture for the Sunday papers

And you could write under it:

Morning glories

Born from the soil of love,

Yet now perished.

Have you ever stood and watched the kids going to work of a

morning? White faces, skinny legs and arms, slouching along

rubbing the sleep out of their eyes on the go to hold their jobs?

Can you imagine a procession of all the whores of a big town,

marching and marching with painted faces and mocking struts,

all the women who sleep in faded hotels and furnished rooms

with any man coming along with a dollar or five dollars?

Or all the structural iron workers, railroad men and factory hands

in mass formation with stubs of arms and stumps of legs, bodies

broken and hacked while bosses yelled, “Speed—no slack—

go to it!”?

Or two by two all the girls and women who go to the hind doors of

restaurants and through the alleys and on the market street

digging into the garbage barrels to get scraps of stuff to eat?

By the living Christ, these would make disaster pictures to paste on

the front pages of the newspapers.

Yes, the Eastland was a dirty bloody job—bah!

I see a dozen Eastlands

Every morning on my way to work

And a dozen more going home at night.

Anna Imroth

Cross the hands over the breast here—so.

Straighten the legs a little more—so.

And call for the wagon to come and take her home.

Her mother will cry some and so will her sisters and brothers.

But all of the others got down and they are safe and this is the only

one of the factory girls who wasn’t lucky in making the jump

when the fire broke.

It is the hand of God and the lack of fire escapes.

The Hammer

I have seen

The old gods go

And the new gods come.

Day by day

And year by year

The idols fall

And the idols rise.

Today

I worship the hammer.

1910

Child of the Romans

The dago shovelman sits by the railroad track

Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna.

A train whirls by, and men and women at tables

Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils,

Eat steaks running with brown gravy,

Strawberries and cream, eclairs and coffee.

The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna,

Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy,

And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day’s work

Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils

Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases

Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars.