The last poem in of those books.
And it was a poem that kind of ended a way of writing.
It was the title poem of the last of the books,
and it was called The Drunk In The Furnace.
And I guess it's always as good way
of leaving those poems as any.
"For a good decade the furnace stood
in the naked gully, fire-less and vacant as any hat.
Then when it was no more to them than a hulking black fossil
to erode unnoticed with the rest of the junk hill
by the poisonous Creek, and rapidly
to be added to their ignorance.
They were afterwards astonished to confirm one morning
a twist of smoke like a pale resurrection staggering out
of its chewed hole.
And to remark than other tokens that someone causally bolted
behind the eye hold iron door of the drafty burner
had there established his bad castle.
Where he gets his spirits it's a mystery.
But the stuff keeps him musical.
Hammer and anvilling with poker and bottle
to his jagged bellowing.
Till the last groaning clang as he collapses onto the rioting
springs of a litter of car seats arranged on the grates
to sleep like an iron pig.
In their tar paper church, on a text about stoke holes
that are sated never.
Their reverend lingers.
They nod and hate trespassers.
When the furnace wakes though, all
afternoon their witless offspring flock like pipe rats
to its siren crescendo.
And agape on the crumbling ridge stand in a row and learn."
I maybe should have put a little bit of introductory material
in front of that.
I mean, my father's and mothers both their families
come from Western Pennsylvania.
Sort of unrecognizable now as it would have been to my father
as a child.
But it was small steel mills, and coke ovens, and so forth
along the river.
And then wild country up behind it.
And it all follow the river.
And they were mainly very fundamentalist protestants
and very anti drink.
Of course, naturally quite a few of them drank and--
[LAUGHTER]