They rented rooms in a low house by tracks
in the industrial area,
where freighters from Greece and Liberia
lay together under cranes, and the stacks
of so many chthonian factories
blew out into the sky the stink and boom
of manufacturing inside rooms
as big as subterranean cities.
Not far beyond the backyard of their home
the blue refinery fires burned,
and men went back and forth in trucks to earn
a kind of living in the outer zone.
They stayed out there among the chemical tanks,
thinking of cadmium and other things.