Vats of Golden Soup

Edmund Wilson

These bones from which the flesh is torn away,

These gruesome leavings of old motor cars,

These bent and broken fenders, wheels and bars

Fed to the roaring furnaces - are they

The bats and toads and lizards, let us say,

Of new magicians - brawny avatars,

Possessed of power.and wisdom from the stars,

Who make ten thousand tons of steel a day?

Or can it be as in the long ago

When altar-fires of Yaweh, Ammon, Thor

Were fed with bloody sacrifice? But, no!

This god has priests and fire, yet none adore

His majesty; and though men bring him gold, ..

They want it back again an hundredfold.