Spreading cross-sections of engineers:
The way we move.
Thumbing the cratered cheeks of farmers:
The way we feed.
Stroking the silken shorts of fighters:
The way we lust.
The heat-blood-toil
Of Thomas Hart Benton
Floods this chamber.
Twelve panels’ worth of big-letter
VISION:
Black sows, white cotton,
Steel ships, electric cities,
Soda fountains of jazz and money,
Furnaces jewelled with sweat
And carbon.
Drink it dry.
Drain the hall.
Make a hole of air.
There’s more, always more,
In this land —
America.
Written after viewing the ‘America Today’ mural at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
