Your hammer prints its arc on the face
of the sky when you swing
A thousand birds in your rock hammer
suck the moist sky and sing an intense
song swollen like a wounded heart.

Your ten pound hammer plucks the sun
which you hammer till it showers its southern
warmth all over the earth.
Under your hammerblows we shed the blinding
fish scales and see the rivers in the rainbow

the rainbows and whirlwinds in a teardrop:
You beat the sweat into a jewel,
the broken chain link into a diamond
rare as the sea star and hammer
the diamond into a rainbow whose
translucent crystal hangs down your furrowed face:

The ring of John Henry's hammer in your mouth
And its dazzling rainbow in your eyes
Your hammerblow cracks and wounds the rock
Pure water jets out of it: you are the sun
That pierces the dewdrop: your rainbow hugs your land:

When you talk into the steel, the steel sings;
When you speak into the rock, the rock cries out
And the restless water in your mouth hums,
Rears like the Mississippi, thunders like the wild Atlantic.

When you look into the iron, the iron flares
into the embittered cane singing in the wind:
Your arms are railroad tracks that embrace
the land you know like a lover's body
whose sap drums through your veins
its pulse and your hammerblows singing through your blood.

Yes, you will die with your talking hammer in your hand.

—for Sterling A. Brown, on your birthday
(May 1,1981)