Texaco Oil Storage Tanks - Roger Robinson

You silver gods, with viscous black innards,
skin of iron plates and bones of steel rivets,

your Cyclopean eye is a bright red star.
At each entrance stands an armed, khakied guard;

they check our passes, though we’ve known them for years,
for though we work here, we don’t belong.

A new shift begins, our brown workboots trudge
and the unemployed beg and plead out front

in full view, with burning sun on their shame,
but it’s not worse than their child’s hunger pains.

Our fingernails are full of tar and dust:
you came for the oil, and left with our blood.

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Roger Robinson (20th century) Trinidad & England
Source: Zócalo Poets