"The Shirt" de Robert Pinsky

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The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,

The nearly invisible stitches along the collar

Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

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Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break

Or talking money or politics while one fitted

This armpiece with its overseam to the band

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Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,

The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,

The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

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At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.

One hundred and forty-six died in the flames

On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes-

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- The witness in a building across the street

Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step

Up to the windowsill, then held her out

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Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.

And then another. As if he were helping them up

To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

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A third before he dropped her put her arms

Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held

Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

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He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared

And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,

Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers-

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- Like Hart Crane's Bedlamite, "shrill shirt ballooning."

Wonderful how the patern matches perfectly

Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

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Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme

Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,

Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

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Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,

To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed

By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

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Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers

to wear among the dusty clattering looms.

Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

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The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter

Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton

As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

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George Herbert, your descendant is a Black

Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma

And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

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And feel and its clean smell have satisfied

both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality

Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

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The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters

Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,

The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.