The Ruins of Bethlehem Steel

Men made things at the mill: armor
plate, battleship guns, girders
that gave rise to the Empire State

Building and span to the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Tell him of Things,” Rilke wrote.
“He will stand astonished, as you stood

by the rope-maker in Rome or the potter
along the Nile.” To forge iron is to win
the favor of Hephaestus—a chance at godhood.

But the fume-belching blast furnace has expired,
its lungs succumbed to a carcinoma of rust. Steel’s
improbable obsolescence. Even the slot parlor

with its promise of glamour and bling
is devoid of the clinking of metal falling on metal.
The humiliation of a company once powerful,

now spent and exhausted, remains,
along with offers to treat addiction to casino games.
And yet, it’s here they come to press their luck,

the new rank and file whose ferrous blood
obeys the ore’s magnetic tug
—the faithful summoned to Bethlehem.

Joseph Dorazio
published in Philadelphia Poets 2010, Volume 16

Written on the occasion of the grand opening of the Sands Casino on the site of the former Bethlehem Steel Mill, Bethlehem, PA

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver