The Technology of Industry

Kim Maltman
From:   Technologies/Installations. Brick Books, 1990.

Above the expanse of light industry and power lines a full, coppery dawn moon persists, impassive, like a penny worn smooth by handling tossed down on the faint blued counter of a late night restaurant, at closing, for a book of matches. The line of cars flows on, unhindered, and that stupefied attention, before wakefulness, that borders on some grander, or perhaps in truth, more terrifying, being. The big rigs will have begun to creep their way now along Industry Drive, or they turn up Photography Road, and the jouncing of the seat is absorbed into the driver's body rhythms. Radios play, perhaps someone thinks "Weekend" but no, it's early yet, best shut that off, forget it. Of the night in the African veldt one hears it said "The great storm has damaged the burrows of the termites, exposing the workers." "Exactly", one is inclined to say. "Then morning comes and the sky is clear again", its deep blue seems to last forever, and the moon is lost there, like the ornate fixtures found on the doorposts of old houses, under layers of paint, inscribed with the blessings and fears of the time, now covered with verdigris. The bare branches of the maples reach up to embrace it and the last of the neon signs burn on into the morning. On one of them, it seems, the figure of a dwarf, as in the old days, drawn half in mockery and half in dread, might lean out over the city and call to the passing cars "What use is all our thought and industry if it is to be used to glorify the tall and shapely?"

Poem 1 | Poem 2 | Poem 3 | Poem 4 | Poem 5 | Poem 6

Kim Maltman's works copyright © to the author.