The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands, <br />An iron authority against the snow, <br />And this grey monument to common sense <br />Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands, <br />Of protest, men in league, and of the slow <br />Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence. <br /> <br />Beyond, through broken windows one can see <br />Where the great presses paused between their strokes <br />And thus remain, in air suspended, caught <br />In the sure margin of eternity. <br />The cast-iron wheels have stopped; one counts the spokes <br />Which movement blurred, the struts inertia fought, <br /> <br />And estimates the loss of human power, <br />Experienced and slow, the loss of years, <br />The gradual decay of dignity. <br />Men lived within these foundries, hour by hour; <br />Nothing they forged outlived the rusted gears <br />Which might have served to grind their eulogy.<br /><br />Philip Levine<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-abandoned-factory-detroit/
