"Gesang ist Dasein" A small thing done well, the steel bit paring the cut end of the collar, lifting delicate blue spirals of iron slowly out of lamplight into darkness until they broke and fell into a pool of oil and water below. A small thing done well, my father said so often that I tired of hearing it and lost myself in the shop's north end, an underworld of welders who wore black masks and stared through smoked glass where all was midnight except the purest spark, the blue-white arc of the clamp and rod. Hammers made dull tunes hacking slag, and acetylene flames cast shadows of men against the tin roof like great birds trapped in diminishing circles of light. Each day was like another. I stood beside him and watched the lathe spin on, coils of iron climbing into dusk, the file's drone, the rasp, and finally the honing cloth with its small song of things done well that I would carry into sleep and dreams of men with wings of fire and steel.