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Home  »  Smoke and Steel  »  2. Five Towns on the B. & O.

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Smoke and Steel. 1922.

I. Smoke Nights

2. Five Towns on the B. & O.

BY day … tireless smokestacks … hungry smoky shanties hanging to the slopes … crooning: We get by, that’s all.

By night … all lit up … fire-gold bars, fire-gold flues … and the shanties shaking in clumsy shadows … almost the hills shaking … all crooning: By God, we’re going to find out or know why.