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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Marjorie Allen Seiffert

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Shop

Marjorie Allen Seiffert

From “Gallery of Paintings”

THE SHOP is red and crimson. Under the forge

Men hold red bars of iron with black iron tongs.

It crashes—sparks spatter out; it crashes again, again.

At last the iron is bent as it belongs.

Swedes, Norwegians, Poles or Greeks—they are men:

They grin when they please, look ugly when they please;

They wear black oakum in their ears for the noise;

They know their job, handle their tools with ease.

Their eyes are clean and white in their black faces;

If they like, they are surly, can speak an ugly no;

They laugh great blocks of mirth, their jokes are simple;

They know where they stand, which way they go.

If I wore overalls, lost my disguise

Of womanhood and youth, they would call me friend;

They would see I am one of them, and we could talk

And laugh together, and smoke at the day’s end.