Night Shift
Night Shift - meaning Summary
Industry Intrudes on Evening
The speaker hears a distant, rhythmic pounding that at first feels like a heart but turns out to be a factory at night. The poem shifts from intimate apprehension to an external scene: hammers, wheels and men in undershirts who tirelessly tend machines. It presents industrial labor as an implacable, physical force that reshapes the evening and the speaker’s perception, emphasizing relentless routine and the physicality of work in the suburbs.
Read Complete AnalysesIt was not a heart, beating. That muted boom, that clangor Far off, not blood in the ears Drumming up and fever To impose on the evening. The noise came from outside: A metal detonating Native, evidently, to These stilled suburbs nobody Startled at it, though the sound Shook the ground with its pounding. It took a root at my coming Till the thudding shource, exposed, Counfounded in wept guesswork: Framed in windows of Main Street's Silver factory, immense Hammers hoisted, wheels turning, Stalled, let fall their vertical Tonnage of metal and wood; Stunned in marrow. Men in white Undershirts circled, tending Without stop those greased machines, Tending, without stop, the blunt Indefatigable fact.
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