The Buildings

The buildings made all of brick & cement

All made by the labor of the common men

Who dwell like slaves in little brick shacks

The buildings slowly rise one floor after another

A year in the making

A year in the life of a construction worker

They rise on the landscape

An endless depth of square mountains

One following behind another

Leviathans of the earth

The bricks are stacked in endless piles

And the 3-wheeled tractors come and go

All day, all night

The machines are rattling and coughing

Banging and driving

The foreman shouts his orders

The hoists lift more loads of mortar and brick

The cement mixers grind and pour

The lime-pits dug in the sand

The wires coursing here and there

Among the long bent bars of rebar

China builds itself

Day and night

It doesn't even stop

To take a rest