Requiem

 

Requiem

December 18, 2023, New York Times: U.S. Steel to Be Bought by Japanese Rival 

 

Pure power.

I saw it once.

Showering from the pregnant mouth of a smelter in liquid stars.

Birthing its own dawn,

cascading into wide waiting trenches,

consuming every atom it approached.

scorching even the air.

 

What began as iron and cool coke

exploded to life and purpose

from a chemist’s dream,

not steel but vision

grown into monument

carrying us shoulder high

wide as invention,

broad as courage

solid as unbound minds.

 

It was so beautiful.

 

It lost no grandeur

even as it grayed into slab,

cooling as it moved.

Dignified even while consecrated to

hot rolls pressing it to near paper,

and rocketing out, thundering, into coils,

bending into the place mortals live

to meet a Hephaestion future forged in its own furnace.

 

But when future came,

the god lingered and lagged.

Grandeur and dignity faded,

romance reduced to pragmatic function.

 

Steel still breeds from formulaic components

but the spark smoldered and died.

No fresh sun rises to the blast.

No new charge promises a bloom.

 

There is weeping in Gary.

 

Image courtesy of Science Photo Library