Cinder Buggy - part 2 - definitions and foreshadowing

Click here for part I of The Cinder Buggy review.

Between the title page and Chapter I of The Cinder Buggy, the following poem appears:

A pot-metal body
on two little wheels,
absurdly,
bow-leggedly
walking away to the dump
with the slag, the
purgings of iron, the
villainous drool of the furnace -
that is a cinder buggy.

It is also a sign
that what man refines
beyond God's content
with things as he left them
will very soon perish
for want of the dross
from which it is parted.
Why hath each thing its cinder? -
even the sweetest desire?


This poem not only defines the title of the book, it foreshadows both the deeper meaning of that title as well as potentially ominous plot developments. I have not read most of the book yet so I do not know how well this poem reflects the plot. At this point, I can only hope that the story lives up to the poem.
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Click here for Part 3.