CHICAGO POEMS, by CARL SANDBURG. Digitized by Cardinalis Etext Press, C.E.K. Posted to Wiretap in June 1993, as chicago.txt. This text is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN. CHICAGO POEMS By CARL SANDBURG NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1916 BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY To MY WIFE AND PAL LILLIAN STEICHEN SANDBURG PREFATORY NOTE Some of these writings were first printed in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Chicago. Permission to reprint is by courtesy of that publication. The writer wishes to thank Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson, editors of Poetry, and William Marion Reedy, editor of Reedy's Mirror, St. Louis, whose services have heightened what values of human address herein hold good. CONTENTS CHICAGO POEMS Chicago. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sketch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Masses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Harbor . . . . . . . . . . . . . They Will Say. . . . . . . . . . . . Mill-Doors . . . . . . . . . . . . . Halsted Street Car . . . . . . . . . Clark Street Bridge. . . . . . . . . Passers-by . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Walking Man of Rodin . . . . . . Subway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Shovel Man . . . . . . . . . . . A Teamster's Farewell. . . . . . . . Fish Crier . . . . . . . . . . . . . Picnic Boat. . . . . . . . . . . . . Happiness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Muckers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Blacklisted. . . . . . . . . . . . . Graceland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Child of the Romans. . . . . . . . . The Right to Grief . . . . . . . . . Mag. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Onion Days . . . . . . . . . . . . . Population Drifts. . . . . . . . . . Cripple. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Fence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anna Imroth. . . . . . . . . . . . . Working Girls. . . . . . . . . . . . Mamie. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Personality. . . . . . . . . . . . . Cumulatives. . . . . . . . . . . . . To Certain Journeymen. . . . . . . . Chamfort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Limited. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Has-Been . . . . . . . . . . . . In a Back Alley. . . . . . . . . . . A Coin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dynamiter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ice Handler. . . . . . . . . . . . . Jack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fellow Citizens. . . . . . . . . . . Nigger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Two Neighbors. . . . . . . . . . . . Style. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To Beachey--1912 . . . . . . . . . . Under a Hat Rim. . . . . . . . . . . In a Breath. . . . . . . . . . . . . Bath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bronzes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dunes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . On the Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ready to Kill. . . . . . . . . . . . To a Contemporary Bunkshooter. . . . Skyscraper . . . . . . . . . . . . . HANDFULS Fog. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan Kubelik. . . . . . . . . . . . . Choose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Crimson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Whitelight . . . . . . . . . . . . . Flux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . White Shoulders. . . . . . . . . . . Losses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Troths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WAR POEMS (1914-1915) Killers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Among the Red Guns . . . . . . . . . Iron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Murmurings in a Field Hospital . . . Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Buttons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And They Obey. . . . . . . . . . . . Jaws . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Salvage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THE ROAD AND THE END The Road and the End . . . . . . . . Choices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Graves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aztec Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . Momus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Answer . . . . . . . . . . . . . To a Dead Man. . . . . . . . . . . . Under. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A Sphinx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Who Am I?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Our Prayer of Thanks . . . . . . . . FOGS AND FIRES At a Window. . . . . . . . . . . . . Under the Harvest Moon . . . . . . . The Great Hunt . . . . . . . . . . . Monotone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shirt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aztec. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Two. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Back Yard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . On the Breakwater. . . . . . . . . . Mask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pearl Fog. . . . . . . . . . . . . . I Sang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Follies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard . . Hydrangeas . . . . . . . . . . . . . Theme in Yellow. . . . . . . . . . . Between Two Hills. . . . . . . . . . Last Answers . . . . . . . . . . . . Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Young Sea. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bones. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Child. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Poppies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Child Moon . . . . . . . . . . . . . Margaret . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SHADOWS Poems Done on a Late Night Car. . . . It Is Much. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trafficker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harrison Street Court . . . . . . . . Soiled Dove . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jungheimer's. . . . . . . . . . . . . Gone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OTHER DAYS (1900-1910) Dreams in the Dusk. . . . . . . . . . Docks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . All Day Long. . . . . . . . . . . . . Waiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From the Shore. . . . . . . . . . . . Uplands in May. . . . . . . . . . . . A Dream Girl. . . . . . . . . . . . . The Plowboy . . . . . . . . . . . . . Broadway. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Old Woman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Noon Hour . . . . . . . . . . . . 'Boes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Under a Telephone Pole. . . . . . . . I Am the People, the Mob. . . . . . . Government. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Letters to Dead Imagists. . . . . . . Sheep . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Red Son . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Mist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Junk Man. . . . . . . . . . . . . Silver Nails. . . . . . . . . . . . . Gypsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHICAGO POEMS CHICAGO HOG Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders: They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger. And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities; Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness, Bareheaded, Shoveling, Wrecking, Planning, Building, breaking, rebuilding, Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth, Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs, Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle, Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse. and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing! Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation. SKETCH THE shadows of the ships Rock on the crest In the low blue lustre Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide. A long brown bar at the dip of the sky Puts an arm of sand in the span of salt. The lucid and endless wrinkles Draw in, lapse and withdraw. Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles Wash on the floor of the beach. Rocking on the crest In the low blue lustre Are the shadows of the ships. MASSES AMONG the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and red crag and was amazed; On the beach where the long push under the endless tide maneuvers, I stood silent; Under the stars on the prairie watching the Dipper slant over the horizon's grass, I was full of thoughts. Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and workers, mothers lifting their children--these all I touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them. And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions of the Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the darkness of night--and all broken, humble ruins of nations. LOST DESOLATE and lone All night long on the lake Where fog trails and mist creeps, The whistle of a boat Calls and cries unendingly, Like some lost child In tears and trouble Hunting the harbor's breast And the harbor's eyes. THE HARBOR PASSING through huddled and ugly walls By doorways where women Looked from their hunger-deep eyes, Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands, Out from the huddled and ugly walls, I came sudden, at the city's edge, On a blue burst of lake, Long lake waves breaking under the sun On a spray-flung curve of shore; And a fluttering storm of gulls, Masses of great gray wings And flying white bellies Veering and wheeling free in the open. THEY WILL SAY OF my city the worst that men will ever say is this: You took little children away from the sun and the dew, And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky, And the reckless rain; you put them between walls To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages, To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights. MILL-DOORS YOU never come back. I say good-by when I see you going in the doors, The hopeless open doors that call and wait And take you then for--how many cents a day? How many cents for the sleepy eyes and fingers? I say good-by because I know they tap your wrists, In the dark, in the silence, day by day, And all the blood of you drop by drop, And you are old before you are young. You never come back. HALSTED STREET CAR COME you, cartoonists, Hang on a strap with me here At seven o'clock in the morning On a Halsted street car. Take your pencils And draw these faces. Try with your pencils for these crooked faces, That pig-sticker in one corner--his mouth-- That overall factory girl--her loose cheeks. Find for your pencils A way to mark your memory Of tired empty faces. After their night's sleep, In the moist dawn And cool daybreak, Faces Tired of wishes, Empty of dreams. CLARK STREET BRIDGE DUST of the feet And dust of the wheels, Wagons and people going, All day feet and wheels. Now. . . . . Only stars and mist A lonely policeman, Two cabaret dancers, Stars and mist again, No more feet or wheels, No more dust and wagons. Voices of dollars And drops of blood . . . . . Voices of broken hearts, . . Voices singing, singing, . . Silver voices, singing, Softer than the stars, Softer than the mist. PASSERS-BY PASSERS-BY, Out of your many faces Flash memories to me Now at the day end Away from the sidewalks Where your shoe soles traveled And your voices rose and blent To form the city's afternoon roar Hindering an old silence. Passers-by, I remember lean ones among you, Throats in the clutch of a hope, Lips written over with strivings, Mouths that kiss only for love. Records of great wishes slept with, Held long And prayed and toiled for. . Yes, Written on Your mouths And your throats I read them When you passed by. THE WALKING MAN OF RODIN LEGS hold a torso away from the earth. And a regular high poem of legs is here. Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear And arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and run motors. You make us Proud of our legs, old man. And you left off the head here, The skull found always crumbling neighbor of the ankles. SUBWAY DOWN between the walls of shadow Where the iron laws insist, The hunger voices mock. The worn wayfaring men With the hunched and humble shoulders, Throw their laughter into toil. THE SHOVEL MAN ON the street Slung on his shoulder is a handle half way across, Tied in a big knot on the scoop of cast iron Are the overalls faded from sun and rain in the ditches; Spatter of dry clay sticking yellow on his left sleeve And a flimsy shirt open at the throat, I know him for a shovel man, A dago working for a dollar six bits a day And a dark-eyed woman in the old country dreams of him for one of the world's ready men with a pair of fresh lips and a kiss better than all the wild grapes that ever grew in Tuscany. A TEAMSTER'S FAREWELL Sobs En Route to a Penitentiary GOOD-BY now to the streets and the clash of wheels and locking hubs, The sun coming on the brass buckles and harness knobs. The muscles of the horses sliding under their heavy haunches, Good-by now to the traffic policeman and his whistle, The smash of the iron hoof on the stones, All the crazy wonderful slamming roar of the street-- O God, there's noises I'm going to be hungry for. FISH CRIER I KNOW a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble in January. He dangles herring before prospective customers evincing a joy identical with that of Pavlowa dancing. His face is that of a man terribly glad to be selling fish, terribly glad that God made fish, and customers to whom he may call his wares, from a pushcart. PICNIC BOAT SUNDAY night and the park policemen tell each other it is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michigan. A big picnic boat comes home to Chicago from the peach farms of Saugatuck. Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night's darkness, a flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a standstill. Running along the deck railings are festoons and leaping in curves are loops of light from prow and stern to the tall smokestacks. Over the hoarse crunch of waves at my pier comes a hoarse answer in the rhythmic oompa of the brasses playing a Polish folk-song for the home-comers. HAPPINESS I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion. MUCKERS TWENTY men stand watching the muckers. Stabbing the sides of the ditch Where clay gleams yellow, Driving the blades of their shovels Deeper and deeper for the new gas mains Wiping sweat off their faces With red bandanas The muckers work on . . pausing . . to pull Their boots out of suckholes where they slosh. Of the twenty looking on Ten murmer, "O, its a hell of a job," Ten others, "Jesus, I wish I had the job." BLACKLISTED WHY shall I keep the old name? What is a name anywhere anyway? A name is a cheap thing all fathers and mothers leave each child: A job is a job and I want to live, so Why does God Almighty or anybody else care whether I take a new name to go by? GRACELAND TOMB of a millionaire, A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen, Place of the dead where they spend every year The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars For upkeep and flowers To keep fresh the memory of the dead. The merchant prince gone to dust Commanded in his written will Over the signed name of his last testament Twenty-five thousand dollars be set aside For roses, lilacs, hydrangeas, tulips, For perfume and color, sweetness of remembrance Around his last long home. (A hundred cash girls want nickels to go to the movies to-night. In the back stalls of a hundred saloons, women are at tables Drinking with men or waiting for men jingling loose silver dollars in their pockets. In a hundred furnished rooms is a girl who sells silk or dress goods or leather stuff for six dollars a week wages And when she pulls on her stockings in the morning she is reckless about God and the newspapers and the police, the talk of her home town or the name people call her.) CHILD OF THE ROMANS THE dago shovelman sits by the railroad track Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna. A train whirls by, and men and women at tables Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils, Eat steaks running with brown gravy, Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee. The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna, Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy, And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day's work Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars. THE RIGHT TO GRIEF To Certain Poets About to Die TAKE your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow, Over the dead child of a millionaire, And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank Which the millionaire might order his secretary to scratch off And get cashed. Very well, You for your grief and I for mine. Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to. I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky. His job is sweeping blood off the floor. He gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works And it's many tubs of blood he shoves out with a broom day by day. Now his three year old daughter Is in a white coffin that cost him a week's wages. Every Saturday night he will pay the undertaker fifty cents till the debt is wiped out. The hunky and his wife and the kids Cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the white box. They remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor bills. They are glad it is gone for the rest of the family now will have more to eat and wear. Yet before the majesty of Death they cry around the coffin And wipe their eyes with red bandanas and sob when the priest says, "God have mercy on us all." I have a right to feel my throat choke about this. You take your grief and I mine--see? To-morrow there is no funeral and the hunky goes back to his job sweeping blood off the floor at a dollar seventy cents a day. All he does all day long is keep on shoving hog blood ahead of him with a broom MAG I WISH to God I never saw you, Mag. I wish you never quit your job and came along with me. I wish we never bought a license and a white dress For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister And told him we would love each other and take care of each other Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts anywhere. Yes, I'm wishing now you lived somewhere away from here And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away dead broke. I wish the kids had never come And rent and coal and clothes to pay for And a grocery man calling for cash, Every day cash for beans and prunes. I wish to God I never saw you, Mag. I wish to God the kids had never come. ONION DAYS MRS. GABRIELLE GIOVANNITTI comes along Peoria Street every morning at nine o'clock With kindling wood piled on top of her head, her eyes looking straight ahead to find the way for her old feet. Her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, whose husband was killed in a tunnel explosion through the negligence of a fellow-servant, Works ten hours a day, sometimes twelve, picking onions for Jasper on the Bowmanville road. She takes a street car at half-past five in the morning, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti does, And gets back from Jasper's with cash for her day's work, between nine and ten o'clock at night. Last week she got eight cents a box, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, picking onions for Jasper, But this week Jasper dropped the pay to six cents a box because so many women and girls were answering the ads in the Daily News. Jasper belongs to an Episcopal church in Ravenswood and on certain Sundays He enjoys chanting the Nicene creed with his daughters on each side of him joining their voices with his. If the preacher repeats old sermons of a Sunday, Jasper's mind wanders to his 700-acre farm and how he can make it produce more efficiently And sometimes he speculates on whether he could word an ad in the Daily News so it would bring more women and girls out to his farm and reduce operating costs. Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti is far from desperate about life; her joy is in a child she knows will arrive to her in three months. And now while these are the pictures for today there are other pictures of the Giovannitti people I could give you for to-morrow, And how some of them go to the county agent on winter mornings with their baskets for beans and cornmeal and molasses. I listen to fellows saying here's good stuff for a novel or it might be worked up into a good play. I say there's no dramatist living can put old Mrs. Gabrielle Giovannitti into a play with that kindling wood piled on top of her head coming along Peoria Street nine o'clock in the morning. POPULATION DRIFTS NEW-MOWN hay smell and wind of the plain made her a woman whose ribs had the power of the hills in them and her hands were tough for work and there was passion for life in her womb. She and her man crossed the ocean and the years that marked their faces saw them haggling with landlords and grocers while six children played on the stones and prowled in the garbage cans. One child coughed its lungs away, two more have adenoids and can neither talk nor run like their mother, one is in jail, two have jobs in a box factory And as they fold the pasteboard, they wonder what the wishing is and the wistful glory in them that flutters faintly when the glimmer of spring comes on the air or the green of summer turns brown: They do not know it is the new-mown hay smell calling and the wind of the plain praying for them to come back and take hold of life again with tough hands and with passion. CRIPPLE ONCE when I saw a cripple Gasping slowly his last days with the white plague, Looking from hollow eyes, calling for air, Desperately gesturing with wasted hands In the dark and dust of a house down in a slum, I said to myself I would rather have been a tall sunflower Living in a country garden Lifting a golden-brown face to the summer, Rain-washed and dew-misted, Mixed with the poppies and ranking hollyhocks, And wonderingly watching night after night The clear silent processionals of stars. A FENCE Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the workmen are beginning the fence. The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that can stab the life out of any man who falls on them. As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering children looking for a place to play. Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrow. ANNA IMROTH CROSS the hands over the breast here--so. Straighten the legs a little more--so. And call for the wagon to come and take her home. Her mother will cry some and so will her sisters and brothers. But all of the others got down and they are safe and this is the only one of the factory girls who wasn't lucky in making the jump when the fire broke. It is the hand of God and the lack of fire escapes. WORKING GIRLS THE working girls in the morning are going to work-- long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms. Each morning as I move through this river of young- woman life I feel a wonder about where it is all going, so many with a peach bloom of young years on them and laughter of red lips and memories in their eyes of dances the night before and plays and walks. Green and gray streams run side by side in a river and so here are always the others, those who have been over the way, the women who know each one the end of life's gamble for her, the meaning and the clew, the how and the why of the dances and the arms that passed around their waists and the fingers that played in their hair. Faces go by written over: "I know it all, I know where the bloom and the laughter go and I have memories," and the feet of these move slower and they have wisdom where the others have beauty. So the green and the gray move in the early morning on the downtown streets. MAMIE MAMIE beat her head against the bars of a little Indiana town and dreamed of romance and big things off somewhere the way the railroad trains all ran. She could see the smoke of the engines get lost down where the streaks of steel flashed in the sun and when the newspapers came in on the morning mail she knew there was a big Chicago far off, where all the trains ran. She got tired of the barber shop boys and the post office chatter and the church gossip and the old pieces the band played on the Fourth of July and Decoration Day And sobbed at her fate and beat her head against the bars and was going to kill herself When the thought came to her that if she was going to die she might as well die struggling for a clutch of romance among the streets of Chicago. She has a job now at six dollars a week in the basement of the Boston Store And even now she beats her head against the bars in the same old way and wonders if there is a bigger place the railroads run to from Chicago where maybe there is romance and big things and real dreams that never go smash. PERSONALITY Musings of a Police Reporter in the Identification Bureau YOU have loved forty women, but you have only one thumb. You have led a hundred secret lives, but you mark only one thumb. You go round the world and fight in a thousand wars and win all the world's honors, but when you come back home the print of the one thumb your mother gave you is the same print of thumb you had in the old home when your mother kissed you and said good-by. Out of the whirling womb of time come millions of men and their feet crowd the earth and they cut one anothers' throats for room to stand and among them all are not two thumbs alike. Somewhere is a Great God of Thumbs who can tell the inside story of this. CUMULATIVES STORMS have beaten on this point of land And ships gone to wreck here and the passers-by remember it with talk on the deck at night as they near it. Fists have beaten on the face of this old prize-fighter And his battles have held the sporting pages and on the street they indicate him with their right fore-finger as one who once wore a championship belt. A hundred stories have been published and a thousand rumored About why this tall dark man has divorced two beautiful young women And married a third who resembles the first two and they shake their heads and say, "There he goes," when he passes by in sunny weather or in rain along the city streets. TO CERTAIN JOURNEYMEN UNDERTAKERS, hearse drivers, grave diggers, I speak to you as one not afraid of your business. You handle dust going to a long country, You know the secret behind your job is the same whether you lower the coffin with modern, automatic machinery, well-oiled and noiseless, or whether the body is laid in by naked hands and then covered by the shovels. Your day's work is done with laughter many days of the year, And you earn a living by those who say good-by today in thin whispers. CHAMFORT THERE'S Chamfort. He's a sample. Locked himself in his library with a gun, Shot off his nose and shot out his right eye. And this Chamfort knew how to write And thousands read his books on how to live, But he himself didn't know How to die by force of his own hand--see? They found him a red pool on the carpet Cool as an April forenoon, Talking and talking gay maxims and grim epigrams. Well, he wore bandages over his nose and right eye, Drank coffee and chatted many years With men and women who loved him Because he laughed and daily dared Death: "Come and take me." LIMITED I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation. Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people. (All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.) I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers: "Omaha." THE HAS-BEEN A STONE face higher than six horses stood five thousand years gazing at the world seeming to clutch a secret. A boy passes and throws a niggerhead that chips off the end of the nose from the stone face; he lets fly a mud ball that spatters the right eye and cheek of the old looker-on. The boy laughs and goes whistling "ee-ee-ee ee-ee-ee." The stone face stands silent, seeming to clutch a secret. IN A BACK ALLEY REMEMBRANCE for a great man is this. The newsies are pitching pennies. And on the copper disk is the man's face. Dead lover of boys, what do you ask for now? A COIN YOUR western heads here cast on money, You are the two that fade away together, Partners in the mist. Lunging buffalo shoulder, Lean Indian face, We who come after where you are gone Salute your forms on the new nickel. You are To us: The past. Runners On the prairie: Good-by. DYNAMITER I SAT with a dynamiter at supper in a German saloon eating steak and onions. And he laughed and told stories of his wife and children and the cause of labor and the working class. It was laughter of an unshakable man knowing life to be a rich and red-blooded thing. Yes, his laugh rang like the call of gray birds filled with a glory of joy ramming their winged flight through a rain storm. His name was in many newspapers as an enemy of the nation and few keepers of churches or schools would open their doors to him. Over the steak and onions not a word was said of his deep days and nights as a dynamiter. Only I always remember him as a lover of life, a lover of children, a lover of all free, reckless laughter everywhere--lover of red hearts and red blood the world over. ICE HANDLER I KNOW an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with pearl buttons the size of a dollar, And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice- box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread, Tells the bartender it's hotter than yesterday and will be hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus, And is on his way with his head in the air and a hard pair of fists. He spends a dollar or so every Saturday night on a two hundred pound woman who washes dishes in the Hotel Morrison. He remembers when the union was organized he broke the noses of two scabs and loosened the nuts so the wheels came off six different wagons one morning, and he came around and watched the ice melt in the street. All he was sorry for was one of the scabs bit him on the knuckles of the right hand so they bled when he came around to the saloon to tell the boys about it. JACK JACK was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day, and his hands were tougher than sole leather. He married a tough woman and they had eight children and the woman died and the children grew up and went away and wrote the old man every two years. He died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in the sun telling reminiscences to other old men whose women were dead and children scattered. There was joy on his face when he died as there was joy on his face when he lived--he was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. FELLOW CITIZENS I DRANK musty ale at the Illinois Athletic Club with the millionaire manufacturer of Green River butter one night And his face had the shining light of an old-time Quaker, he spoke of a beautiful daughter, and I knew he had a peace and a happiness up his sleeve somewhere. Then I heard Jim Kirch make a speech to the Advertising Association on the trade resources of South America. And the way he lighted a three-for-a-nickel stogie and cocked it at an angle regardless of the manners of our best people, I knew he had a clutch on a real happiness even though some of the reporters on his newspaper say he is the living double of Jack London's Sea Wolf. In the mayor's office the mayor himself told me he was happy though it is a hard job to satisfy all the office- seekers and eat all the dinners he is asked to eat. Down in Gilpin Place, near Hull House, was a man with his jaw wrapped for a bad toothache, And he had it all over the butter millionaire, Jim Kirch and the mayor when it came to happiness. He is a maker of accordions and guitars and not only makes them from start to finish, but plays them after he makes them. And he had a guitar of mahogany with a walnut bottom he offered for seven dollars and a half if I wanted it, And another just like it, only smaller, for six dollars, though he never mentioned the price till I asked him, And he stated the price in a sorry way, as though the music and the make of an instrument count for a million times more than the price in money. I thought he had a real soul and knew a lot about God. There was light in his eyes of one who has conquered sorrow in so far as sorrow is conquerable or worth conquering. Anyway he is the only Chicago citizen I was jealous of that day. He played a dance they play in some parts of Italy when the harvest of grapes is over and the wine presses are ready for work. NIGGER I AM the nigger. Singer of songs, Dancer. . . Softer than fluff of cotton. . . Harder than dark earth Roads beaten in the sun By the bare feet of slaves. . . Foam of teeth. . . breaking crash of laughter. . . Red love of the blood of woman, White love of the tumbling pickaninnies. . . Lazy love of the banjo thrum. . . Sweated and driven for the harvest-wage, Loud laugher with hands like hams, Fists toughened on the handles, Smiling the slumber dreams of old jungles, Crazy as the sun and dew and dripping, heaving life of the jungle, Brooding and muttering with memories of shackles: I am the nigger. Look at me. I am the nigger. TWO NEIGHBORS FACES of two eternities keep looking at me. One is Omar Khayam and the red stuff wherein men forget yesterday and to-morrow and remember only the voices and songs, the stories, newspapers and fights of today. One is Louis Cornaro and a slim trick of slow, short meals across slow, short years, letting Death open the door only in slow, short inches. I have a neighbor who swears by Omar. I have a neighbor who swears by Cornaro. Both are happy. Faces of two eternities keep looking at me. Let them look. STYLE STYLE--go ahead talking about style. You can tell where a man gets his style just as you can tell where Pavlowa got her legs or Ty Cobb his batting eye. Go on talking. Only don't take my style away. It's my face. Maybe no good but anyway, my face. I talk with it, I sing with it, I see, taste and feel with it, I know why I want to keep it. Kill my style and you break Pavlowa's legs, and you blind Ty Cobb's batting eye. TO BEACHEY, 1912 RIDING against the east, A veering, steady shadow Purrs the motor-call Of the man-bird Ready with the death-laughter In his throat And in his heart always The love of the big blue beyond. Only a man, A far fleck of shadow on the east Sitting at ease With his hands on a wheel And around him the large gray wings. Hold him, great soft wings, Keep and deal kindly, O wings, With the cool, calm shadow at the wheel. UNDER A HAT RIM WHILE the hum and the hurry Of passing footfalls Beat in my ear like the restless surf Of a wind-blown sea, A soul came to me Out of the look on a face. Eyes like a lake Where a storm-wind roams Caught me from under The rim of a hat. I thought of a midsea wreck and bruised fingers clinging to a broken state-room door. IN A BREATH To the Williamson Brothers HIGH noon. White sun flashes on the Michigan Avenue asphalt. Drum of hoofs and whirr of motors. Women trapsing along in flimsy clothes catching play of sun-fire to their skin and eyes. Inside the playhouse are movies from under the sea. From the heat of pavements and the dust of sidewalks, passers-by go in a breath to be witnesses of large cool sponges, large cool fishes, large cool valleys and ridges of coral spread silent in the soak of the ocean floor thousands of years. A naked swimmer dives. A knife in his right hand shoots a streak at the throat of a shark. The tail of the shark lashes. One swing would kill the swimmer. . . Soon the knife goes into the soft under- neck of the veering fish. . . Its mouthful of teeth, each tooth a dagger itself, set row on row, glistens when the shuddering, yawning cadaver is hauled up by the brothers of the swimmer. Outside in the street is the murmur and singing of life in the sun--horses, motors, women trapsing along in flimsy clothes, play of sun-fire in their blood. BATH A MAN saw the whole world as a grinning skull and cross-bones. The rose flesh of life shriveled from all faces. Nothing counts. Everything is a fake. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a useless silence. So he saw it all. Then he went to a Mischa Elman concert. Two hours waves of sound beat on his eardrums. Music washed something or other inside him. Music broke down and rebuilt something or other in his head and heart. He joined in five encores for the young Russian Jew with the fiddle. When he got outside his heels hit the sidewalk a new way. He was the same man in the same world as before. Only there was a singing fire and a climb of roses everlastingly over the world he looked on. BRONZES I THE bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln Park Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr by in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment for dinner and matinees and buying and selling Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are piling On the slabs of the promenade along the lake shore near by I have seen the general dare the combers come closer And make to ride his bronze horse out into the hoofs and guns of the storm. II I cross Lincoln Park on a winter night when the snow is falling. Lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow, his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the newsies crying forty thousand men are dead along the Yser, his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar of the city at his bronze feet. A lithe Indian on a bronze pony, Shakespeare seated with long legs in bronze, Garibaldi in a bronze cape, they hold places in the cold, lonely snow to-night on their pedestals and so they will hold them past midnight and into the dawn. DUNES WHAT do we see here in the sand dunes of the white moon alone with our thoughts, Bill, Alone with our dreams, Bill, soft as the women tying scarves around their heads dancing, Alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the other of all the dead, The dead more than all these grains of sand one by one piled here in the moon, Piled against the sky-line taking shapes like the hand of the wind wanted, What do we see here, Bill, outside of what the wise men beat their heads on, Outside of what the poets cry for and the soldiers drive on headlong and leave their skulls in the sun for-- what, Bill? ON THE WAY LITTLE one, you have been buzzing in the books, Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyers And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been getting an earful of speech from trained tongues. Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike Along sand stretches on the great inland sea here And while the eastern breeze blows on us and the restless surge Of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever fresh monotone, Let us ask ourselves: What is truth? what do you or I know? How much do the wisest of the world's men know about where the massed human procession is going? You have heard the mob laughed at? I ask you: Is not the mob rough as the mountains are rough? And all things human rise from the mob and relapse and rise again as rain to the sea? READY TO KILL TEN minutes now I have been looking at this. I have gone by here before and wondered about it. This is a bronze memorial of a famous general Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver on him. I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be hauled away to the scrap yard. I put it straight to you, After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory hand, the fireman and the teamster, Have all been remembered with bronze memorials, Shaping them on the job of getting all of us Something to eat and something to wear, When they stack a few silhouettes Against the sky Here in the park, And show the real huskies that are doing the work of the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them, Then maybe I will stand here And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag in the air, And riding like hell on horseback Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way, Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men all over the sweet new grass of the prairie. TO A CONTEMPORARY BUNKSHOOTER You come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about Jesus. Where do you get that stuff? What do you know about Jesus? Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem everybody liked to have this Jesus around because he never made any fake passes and everything he said went and he helped the sick and gave the people hope. You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist and calling us all dam fools so fierce the froth slobbers over your lips. . . always blabbing we're all going to hell straight off and you know all about it. I've read Jesus' words. I know what he said. You don't throw any scare into me. I've got your number. I know how much you know about Jesus. He never came near clean people or dirty people but they felt cleaner because he came along. It was your crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers hired the sluggers and murderers who put Jesus out of the running. I say the same bunch backing you nailed the nails into the hands of this Jesus of Nazareth. He had lined up against him the same crooks and strong-arm men now lined up with you paying your way. This Jesus was good to look at, smelled good, listened good. He threw out something fresh and beautiful from the skin of his body and the touch of his hands wherever he passed along. You slimy bunkshooter, you put a smut on every human blossom in reach of your rotten breath belching about hell-fire and hiccupping about this Man who lived a clean life in Galilee. When are you going to quit making the carpenters build emergency hospitals for women and girls driven crazy with wrecked nerves from your gibberish about Jesus--I put it to you again: Where do you get that stuff; what do you know about Jesus? Go ahead and bust all the chairs you want to. Smash a whole wagon load of furniture at every performance. Turn sixty somersaults and stand on your nutty head. If it wasn't for the way you scare the women and kids I'd feel sorry for you and pass the hat. I like to watch a good four-flusher work, but not when he starts people puking and calling for the doctors. I like a man that's got nerve and can pull off a great original performance, but you--you're only a bug- house peddler of second-hand gospel--you're only shoving out a phoney imitation of the goods this Jesus wanted free as air and sunlight. You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it up all right with them by giving them mansions in the skies after they're dead and the worms have eaten 'em. You tell $6 a week department store girls all they need is Jesus; you take a steel trust wop, dead without having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross and he'll be all right. You tell poor people they don't need any more money on pay day and even if it's fierce to be out of a job, Jesus'll fix that up all right, all right--all they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say. I'm telling you Jesus wouldn't stand for the stuff you're handing out. Jesus played it different. The bank