A Poem By Hannes Kuppers
About him circles a legend
That his arms and his hands and legs
Were formed from a smithy's iron
In Sydney on a night bright as day.
------Hey! Hey! The Iron Man!
A mainspring of steel in his heart,
Free from feeling and human pain,
His brain a bank of switches
Controlling the dynamos.
------Hey! Hey! The Iron Man!
This artificial man was not
Intended for a Six-Day Racer.
He was to be the new Caesar
Which explains his iron strength
------Hey! Hey! The Iron Man!
If all this is legend,
There is also the truth:
There is a human miracle:
Reggie McNamara
------Hey! Hey! The Iron man!
Notes
Peter Neilson points out:
At the end of 1926 the newspaper Die Literarische Welt (Literary World) held a writing competition Bert Brecht . . . as judge . . . selected a poem that had not been entered at all but represented, he said, relevant purposes and the best possible work of its author . . . a young sports fan . . . Hannes Kuppers, and the poem was a tribute to the Australian bicycle racer, Reggie McNamara.