Diagrams

Downtown, an office tower is going up.
And from the mesa of unfinished top
Big cranes jut, spectral points of stiffened net:
Angle top-heavy artefacts, and yet
Diagrams from the sky, as if its air
could drop lines, snip them off, and leave them there.

On girders round them, Indians pad like cats,
with wrenches in their pockets and hard hats.

They wear their yellow boots like moccasins,
balanced where air ends and steel begins.
Sky men, and through the sole’s fresh, chewed and pliant,
they feel the studded bone-edge of the giant.
It grunts and sways through its whole metal length.
And giving to the air is a sign of strength.