OH, when I think of the industrial millions, when I see
some
of
them,
a weight comes
over me heavier than leaden linings of coffins
and I almost cease to exist,
weighed down to extinction
and sunk into depression that almost blots me
out.
Then I say to myself: Am I also dead? is that the
truth?
Then I
know
that with so
many dead men in mills
I too am almost dead.
I know the unliving
factory-hand, living-dead millions
is unliving me, living-dead me,
I, with them, am living dead,
mechanical enslaved at the machine.
And enshrouded in the vast corpse of the industrial
millions
embedded in
them, I look out on the sunshine of the
South.
And though the pomegranate has red flowers outside the
window
and oleander
is hot with perfume under the afternoon sun
and I am “ II Signore “ and
they love me here,
yet I am a mill-hand in Leeds
and the death of the Black Country is upon
me
and I am wrapped
in the lead of a coffin-lining, the living death
of my fellow-men.