| you cease to smell the steel plant
|
| after you’ve lived there for a while
|
| smoke is snow is ash are leaves that blow
|
| through the air aloft
|
| all our houses dim their sliding
|
| to the same soot gray style
|
| and we hang our laundry out on sundays
|
| when they turn the furnaces off
|
| everybody’s daddy works up on the line
|
| the stienbrenners and the wilczewskis
|
| have been there the longest time
|
| everybody’s mommy squints into the sun
|
| sunday afternoon after all the laundry’s done
|
| sometimes a distant siren
|
| can set a dog to barking late at night
|
| then it dominos on down
|
| til every dog is joining in
|
| the first rumours of the layoffs
|
| sang like a distant siren might
|
| and we all perked up our ears
|
| and paced the fence
|
| of the ensuing din
|
| every night, we were glued to the tv news
|
| at six o’clock
|
| cuz it was hard to tell what was real
|
| and what was talk
|
| they explained about the cutbacks
|
| all the earnest frowns
|
| but what they didn’t say was that the plant
|
| was slowly shutting down
|
| this town is not the kind of place
|
| that money people go
|
| they make their jokes up on the tv
|
| about all the snow
|
| and they’re building condos downriver
|
| from where the plant had been
|
| but nobody really lives here
|
| now that the air is clean
|
| the president assured us
|
| it was all gonna trickle down
|
| like it’d be raining so much money
|
| that we’d be sad to see the sun
|
| mr. |
| wilczewski’s brother had some business
|
| out in denver
|
| so they left denver
|
| and everybody knows they were the lucky ones
|
| you cease to smell the steel plant
|
| after you’v ebeen here for a while |