Child of the foundry,
I once hummed with gold light
like a hive. After the trial by fury
my childhood ways
were scorched out of me
like wax from a mould.
I who was once a fat grub
nourished on nectar
was encased in plaster. And,
as if this wasn’t enough,
they covered that with a grout shell.
Inside the crucible
I waited for the precious metal
to be poured molten
into the cavity I had become.
Two rough men tipped
me upside-down, neck up,
and made a botch
of pouring the bronze. For months afterwards
they sawed and filed
at my feeders and sprues,
the vent tubes
that surrounded my face like a scaffold.
I did not ask to be so hard,
to have a soul that rings
with the echoes of dead stars.