by Julia Griffin

“Captured by photographer Lewis Hine, The Sky Boy, as the image became known, encapsulated the daring and vigour of the men who built the Empire State Building, then the world’s tallest structure at 102 storeys and 1,250ft (381m) high. … [A] new book called Men at Work throws light on the lives and opinions of a small fraction of this forgotten workforce. … [The author] saves his most controversial speculation until last: that the unknown Sky Boy was a man called Dick McCarthy, a second-generation American, grandson of Irish immigrants, living in Brooklyn, who died in 1983.”
—The Guardian

Nameless for over ninety years, he swings
Godlike above Manhattan: hooks and wires
And coils of cable have to do for wings.
10 seconds to the sidewalk; to the spires
Probably more like five. So don’t look down.
This is the way that crazy work got done;
Behold the motor-soul of Babel Town
With pride: a Sky Boy, wheeling towards the sun.
So long a cryptic photo, he can claim
Identity at last: a Brooklyn lad,
Irish; McCarthy may have been his name.
So honor him by that, our denim-clad
Wild pioneer, scraping the sky for us;
Or, like the lensman, call him Icarus.