Title: Cornhuskers
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Author: Carl Sandburg
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Cornhuskers
Carl Sandburg
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Table of Contents
Cornhuskers........................................................................................................................................................1
Carl Sandburg..........................................................................................................................................1
CORNHUSKERS.................................................................................................................................................3
PRAIRIE ..................................................................................................................................................3
RIVER ROADS .......................................................................................................................................9
PRAIRIE WATERS BY NIGHT .............................................................................................................9
EARLY MOON .....................................................................................................................................10
LAUGHING CORN..............................................................................................................................10
AUTUMN MOVEMENT ......................................................................................................................11
FALLTIME ............................................................................................................................................11
ILLINOIS FARMER.............................................................................................................................11
HITS AND RUNS.................................................................................................................................12
VILLAGE IN LATE SUMMER...........................................................................................................12
BLIZZARD NOTES ..............................................................................................................................12
SUNSET FROM OMAHA HOTEL WINDOW...................................................................................13
STILL LIFE...........................................................................................................................................13
BAND CONCERT................................................................................................................................14
THREE PIECES ON THE SMOKE OF AUTUMN.............................................................................14
LOCALITIES........................................................................................................................................15
CABOOSE THOUGHTS......................................................................................................................16
ALIX ......................................................................................................................................................18
POTATO BLOSSOM SONGS AND JIGS...........................................................................................18
LOAM ....................................................................................................................................................21
MANITOBA CHILDE ROLAND .........................................................................................................21
WILDERNESS......................................................................................................................................22
PERSONS HALF KNOWN..................................................................................................................23
CHICAGO POET..................................................................................................................................24
FIRELOGS..........................................................................................................................................24
REPETITIONS......................................................................................................................................24
ADELAIDE CRAPSEY........................................................................................................................25
YOUNG BULLFROGS .........................................................................................................................25
MEMOIR OF A PROUD BOY.............................................................................................................26
BILBEA.................................................................................................................................................27
SOUTHERN PACIFIC ..........................................................................................................................27
WASHERWOMAN ...............................................................................................................................28
PORTRAIT OF A MOTOR CAR.........................................................................................................28
GIRL IN A CAGE.................................................................................................................................28
BUFFALO BILL...................................................................................................................................29
SIXTEEN MONTHS .............................................................................................................................29
CHILD MARGARET ............................................................................................................................30
SINGING NIGGER ...............................................................................................................................30
LEATHER LEGGINGS.....................................................................................................................................31
LEATHER LEGGINGS........................................................................................................................31
PRAYERS OF STEEL..........................................................................................................................32
ALWAYS THE MOB ............................................................................................................................32
JABBERERS.........................................................................................................................................33
CARTOON............................................................................................................................................34
INTERIOR .............................................................................................................................................34
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Table of Contents
STREET WINDOW..............................................................................................................................35
PALLADIUMS ......................................................................................................................................36
CLOCKS ................................................................................................................................................36
LEGENDS..........................................................................................................................................................37
CLOWNS DYING .................................................................................................................................37
PSALM OF THOSE WHO GO FORTH BEFORE DAYLIGHT .........................................................38
HORSES AND MEN IN RAIN .............................................................................................................38
QUESTIONNAIRE...............................................................................................................................39
NEAR KEOKUK ...................................................................................................................................39
SLANTS AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK...............................................................................................40
FLAT LANDS.......................................................................................................................................40
LAWYER..............................................................................................................................................41
THREE BALLS .....................................................................................................................................41
CHICKS .................................................................................................................................................41
HUMDRUM..........................................................................................................................................42
JOLIET..................................................................................................................................................42
KNUCKS...............................................................................................................................................43
TESTAMENT ........................................................................................................................................44
HAUNTS............................................................................................................................................................44
VALLEY SONG ....................................................................................................................................44
IN TALL GRASS..................................................................................................................................45
UPSTAIRS .............................................................................................................................................45
MONOSYLLABIC ................................................................................................................................46
FILMS ....................................................................................................................................................46
KREISLER............................................................................................................................................46
THE SEA HOLD...................................................................................................................................47
GOLDWING MOTH .............................................................................................................................47
LOIN CLOTH ........................................................................................................................................47
HEMLOCK AND CEDAR ....................................................................................................................48
SUMMER SHIRT SALE .......................................................................................................................48
MEDALLION ........................................................................................................................................48
BRICKLAYER LOVE..........................................................................................................................49
ASHURNATSIRPAL III .......................................................................................................................49
MAMMY HUMS..................................................................................................................................50
BRINGERS ............................................................................................................................................50
CRIMSON RAMBLER .........................................................................................................................51
HAUNTS...............................................................................................................................................51
HAVE ME.............................................................................................................................................52
FIRE DREAMS.....................................................................................................................................52
BABY FACE.........................................................................................................................................53
THE YEAR ............................................................................................................................................53
DRUMNOTES 1 ...................................................................................................................................54
MOONSET............................................................................................................................................54
GARDEN WIRELESS..........................................................................................................................55
HANDFULS..........................................................................................................................................55
COOL TOMBS ......................................................................................................................................56
SHENANDOAH .................................................................................................................................................56
SHENANDOAH ....................................................................................................................................56
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Table of Contents
NEW FEET ............................................................................................................................................57
OLD OSAWATOMIE ...........................................................................................................................57
GRASS ...................................................................................................................................................57
FLANDERS ...........................................................................................................................................58
GARGOYLE ..........................................................................................................................................58
OLD TIMERS ........................................................................................................................................59
HOUSE..................................................................................................................................................59
JOHN ERICSSON DAY MEMORIAL, 1918 .......................................................................................60
REMEMBERED WOMEN...................................................................................................................61
OUT OF WHITE LIPS..........................................................................................................................61
MEMOIR...............................................................................................................................................62
A MILLION YOUNG WORKMEN, 1915...........................................................................................62
SMOKE.................................................................................................................................................63
A TALL MAN.......................................................................................................................................63
THE FOUR BROTHERS......................................................................................................................64
Cornhuskers
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Page No 5
Cornhuskers
Carl Sandburg
CORNHUSKERS
PRAIRIE
RIVER ROADS
PRAIRIE WATERS BY NIGHT
EARLY MOON
LAUGHING CORN
AUTUMN MOVEMENT
FALLTIME
ILLINOIS FARMER
HITS AND RUNS
VILLAGE IN LATE SUMMER
BLIZZARD NOTES
SUNSET FROM OMAHA HOTEL WINDOW
STILL LIFE
BAND CONCERT
THREE PIECES ON THE SMOKE OF AUTUMN
LOCALITIES
CABOOSE THOUGHTS
ALIX
POTATO BLOSSOM SONGS AND JIGS
LOAM
MANITOBA CHILDE ROLAND
WILDERNESS
PERSONS HALF KNOWN
CHICAGO POET
FIRELOGS
REPETITIONS
ADELAIDE CRAPSEY
YOUNG BULLFROGS
MEMOIR OF A PROUD BOY
BILBEA
SOUTHERN PACIFIC
WASHERWOMAN
PORTRAIT OF A MOTOR CAR
GIRL IN A CAGE
BUFFALO BILL
SIXTEEN MONTHS
CHILD MARGARET
SINGING NIGGER
LEATHER LEGGINGS
LEATHER LEGGINGS
PRAYERS OF STEEL
Cornhuskers 1
Page No 6
ALWAYS THE MOB
JABBERERS
CARTOON
INTERIOR
STREET WINDOW
PALLADIUMS
CLOCKS
LEGENDS
CLOWNS DYING
PSALM OF THOSE WHO GO FORTH BEFORE DAYLIGHT
HORSES AND MEN IN RAIN
QUESTIONNAIRE
NEAR KEOKUK
SLANTS AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK
FLAT LANDS
LAWYER
THREE BALLS
CHICKS
HUMDRUM
JOLIET
KNUCKS
TESTAMENT
HAUNTS
VALLEY SONG
IN TALL GRASS
UPSTAIRS
MONOSYLLABIC
FILMS
KREISLER
THE SEA HOLD
GOLDWING MOTH
LOIN CLOTH
HEMLOCK AND CEDAR
SUMMER SHIRT SALE
MEDALLION
BRICKLAYER LOVE
ASHURNATSIRPAL III
MAMMY HUMS
BRINGERS
CRIMSON RAMBLER
HAUNTS
HAVE ME
FIRE DREAMS
BABY FACE
THE YEAR
DRUMNOTES 1
MOONSET
GARDEN WIRELESS
HANDFULS
COOL TOMBS
SHENANDOAH
Cornhuskers
Cornhuskers 2
Page No 7
SHENANDOAH
NEW FEET
OLD OSAWATOMIE
GRASS
FLANDERS
GARGOYLE
OLD TIMERS
HOUSE
JOHN ERICSSON DAY MEMORIAL, 1918
REMEMBERED WOMEN
OUT OF WHITE LIPS
MEMOIR
A MILLION YOUNG WORKMEN, 1915
SMOKE
A TALL MAN
THE FOUR BROTHERS
TO JANET AND MARGARET
Acknowledgement is set forth that some thing were first printed in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse
Chicago Daily News, and the service of the News, Enterprise Association.
C. S.
CORNHUSKERS
PRAIRIE
I was born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave
me a song and a
slogan.
Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the
black loam came, and the
yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes
a fire sign over the
timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.
Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry
for a new home.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to
a river moon of
water.
The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the
prairie heart.
After the sunburn of the day
handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,
Cornhuskers
CORNHUSKERS 3
Page No 8
after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
the pearlgray haystacks
in the gloaming
are cool prayers
to the harvest hands.
In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels
curse.
On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the
pistons and cheer the
wheels.
I am here when the cities are gone.
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.
The running water babbled to the deer, the cottontail, the gopher.
You came in wagons, making streets and schools,
Kin of the ax and rifle, kin of the plow and horse,
Singing Yankee Doodle, Old Dan Tucker, Turkey in the Straw,
You in the coonskin cap at a log house door hearing a lone wolf howl,
You at a sod house door reading the blizzards and chinooks let loose from Medicine Hat,
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.
I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods motherlike,
While new wars arise and the fresh killings of young men.
I fed the boys who went to France in great dark days.
Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is Valley Forge and the Marne and Verdun,
I who have seen the red births and the red deaths
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.
Have you seen a red sunset drip over one of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave lines of
dawn up a wheat
valley?
Have you heard my threshing crews yelling in the chaff of a strawpile and the running wheat of the
wagonboards, my
cornhuskers, my harvest hands hauling crops, singing dreams of women, worlds, horizons?
Cornhuskers
CORNHUSKERS 4
Page No 9
Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
The mountains stand up.
The salt oceans press in
And push on the coast lines.
The sun, the wind, bring rain
And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a halfcircle:
A loveletter pledge to come again.
Towns on the Soo Line,
Towns on the Big Muddy,
Laugh at each other for cubs
And tease as children.
Omaha and Kansas City, Minneapolis and St. Paul, sisters in a house together, throwing slang,
growing up.
Towns in the Ozarks, Dakota wheat towns, Wichita, Peoria, Buffalo, sisters throwing slang, growing
up.
Out of prairiebrown grass crossed with a streamer of wigwam smokeout of a smoke pillar, a blue
promiseout of wild
ducks woven in greens and purples
Here I saw a city rise and say to the peoples round world: Listen, I am strong, I know what I want.
Out of log houses and stumpscanoes stripped from treesidesflatboats coaxed with an ax from
the timber claimsin the
years when the red and the white men metthe houses and streets rose.
A thousand red men cried and went away to new places for corn and women: a million white men
came and put up
skyscrapers, threw out rails and wires, feelers to the salt sea: now the smokestacks bite the skyline
with stub teeth.
In an early year the call of a wild duck woven in greens and purples: now the riveter's chatter, the
police patrol, the
songwhistle of the steamboat.
To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short.
What brothers these in the dark?
What eaves of skyscrapers against a smoke moon?
These chimneys shaking on the lumber shanties
When the coal boats plow by on the river
The hunched shoulders of the grain elevators
The flame sprockets of the sheet steel mills
And the men in the rolling mills with their shirts off
Cornhuskers
CORNHUSKERS 5
Page No 10
Playing their flesh arms against the twisting wrists of steel:
what brothers these
in the dark
of a thousand years?
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.
In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.
The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf. and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and
a V of gooseberry
pie.
The horses fathom a snow to their knees.
Snow hats are on the rolling prairie hills.
The Mississippi bluffs wear snow hats.
Keep your hogs on changing corn and mashes of grain,
O farmerman.
Cram their insides till they waddle on short legs
Under the drums of bellies, hams of fat.
Kill your hogs with a knife slit under the ear.
Hack them with cleavers.
Hang them with hooks in the hind legs.
A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning.
Sprinkles of dew on the crimsonpurple balls.
The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of dapplegray horses.
The farmer's daughter with a basket of eggs dreams of a new hat to wear to the county fair.
On the leftand righthand side of the road,
Marching corn
I saw it knee high weeks agonow it is head high tassels of red silk creep at the ends of the ears.
I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle
pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the
Cornhuskers
CORNHUSKERS 6
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Declaration of
Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two
by two hunting the
bypaths and kissing bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying goodmorning to
the horses hauling
wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barb wire.
The cornhuskers wear leather on their hands.
There is no letup to the wind.
Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins.
Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the fiveo'clock November sunset: falltime, leaves,
bonfires, stubble, the
old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
The land and the people hold memories, even among the anthills and the angleworms, among the
toads and
woodroachesamong gravestone writings rubbed out by the rainthey keep old things that never
grow old.
The frost loosens corn husks.
The Sun, the rain, the wind
loosen corn husks.
The men and women are helpers.
They are all cornhuskers together.
I see them late in the western evening
in a smokered dust.
The phantom of a yellow rooster flaunting a scarlet comb, on top of a dung pile crying hallelujah to
the streaks of
daylight,
The phantom of an old hunting dog nosing in the underbrush for muskrats, barking at a coon in a
treetop at midnight,
chewing a bone, chasing his tail round a corncrib,
The phantom of an old workhorse taking the steel point of a plow across a fortyacre field in spring,
hitched to a harrow in
summer, hitched to a wagon among cornshocks in fall,
These phantoms come into the talk and wonder of people on the front porch of a farmhouse late
summer nights.
"The shapes that are gone are here," said an old man with a cob pipe in his teeth one night in Kansas
with a hot wind on
the alfalfa.
Cornhuskers
CORNHUSKERS 7
Page No 12
Look at six eggs
In a mockingbird's nest.
Listen to six mockingbirds
Flinging follies of Obejoyful
Over the marshes and uplands.
Look at songs
Hidden in eggs.
When the morning sun is on the trumpetvine blossoms, sing at the kitchen pans: Shout All Over
God's Heaven.
When the rain slants on the potato hills and the sun plays a silver shaft on the last shower, sing to the
bush at the backyard
fence: Mighty Lak a Rose.
When the icy sleet pounds on the storm windows and the house lifts to a great breath, sing for the
outside hills: The Ole
Sheep Done Know the Road, the Young Lambs Must Find the Way.
Spring slips back with a girl face calling always: "Any new songs for me? Any new songs?"
O prairie girl, be lonely, singing, dreaming, waiting your lover comesyour child comesthe
years creep with toes of
April rain on newturned sod.
O prairie girl, whoever leaves you only crimson poppies to talk with, whoever puts a goodby kiss
on your lips and never
comes back
There is a song deep as the falltime redhaws, long as the layer of black loam we go to, the shine of
the morning star over
the corn belt, the wave line of dawn up a wheat valley.
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to
a river moon of
water.
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
only an ocean of tomorrows,
a sky of tomorrows.
Cornhuskers
CORNHUSKERS 8
Page No 13
I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say at sundown:
Tomorrow is a day.
RIVER ROADS
LET the crows go by hawking their caw and caw.
They have been swimming in midnights of coal mines somewhere.
Let 'em hawk their caw and caw.
Let the woodpecker drum and drum on a hickory stump.
He has been swimming in red and blue pools somewhere hundreds of years
And the blue has gone to his wings and the red has gone to his head.
Let his red head drum and drum.
Let the dark pools hold the birds in a lookingglass.
And if the pool wishes, let it shiver to the b!ur of many wings, old swimmers from old places.
Let the redwing streak a line of vermillion on the green wood lines.
And the mist along the river fix its purple in lines of a woman's shawl on lazy shoulders.
PRAIRIE WATERS BY NIGHT
CHATTER of birds two by two raises a night song joining a litany of running watersheer waters
showing the russet of
old stones remembering many rains.
And the long willows drowse on the shoulders of the running water, and sleep from much music;
joined songs of dayend,
feathery throats and stony waters, in a choir chanting new psalms.
It is too much for the long willows when low laughter of a red moon comes down; and the willows
drowse and sleep on
the shoulders of the running water.
Cornhuskers
RIVER ROADS 9
Page No 14
EARLY MOON
THE baby moon, a canoe, a silver papoose canoe, sails and sails in the Indian west.
A ring of silver foxes, a mist of silver foxes, sit and sit around the Indian moon.
One yellow star for a runner, and rows of blue stars for more runners, keep a line of watchers. foxes,
baby moon, runners,
you are the panel of memory, firewhite writing tonight of the Red Man's dreams.
Who squats, legs crossed and arms folded, matching its look against the moonface, the starfaces,
of the West?
Who are the Mississippi Valley ghosts, of copper foreheads, riding wiry ponies in the night?no
bridles, lovearms on the
pony necks, riding in the night a long old trail?
Why do they always come back when the silver foxes sit around the early moon, a silver papoose, in
the Indian west?
LAUGHING CORN
THERE was a high majestic fooling
Day before yesterday in the yellow corn.
And day after tomorrow in the yellow corn
There will be high majestic fooling.
The ears ripen in late summer
And come on with a conquering laughter,
Come on with a high and conquering laughter.
The longtailed blackbirds are hoarse.
One of the smaller blackbirds chitters on a stalk
And a spot of red is on its shoulder
And I never heard its name in my life.
Some of the ears are bursting.
A white juice works inside.
Cornsilk creeps in the end and dangles in the wind.
AlwaysI never knew it any other way
The wind and the corn talk things over together.
And the rain and the corn and the sun and the corn
Talk things over together.
Cornhuskers
EARLY MOON 10
Page No 15
Over the road is the farmhouse.
The siding is white and a green blind is slung loose.
It will not be fixed till the corn is husked.
The farmer and his wife talk things over together.
AUTUMN MOVEMENT
I CRIED over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of
the year, the taker of
seeds.
The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first
spit of snow on the
northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.
FALLTIME
GOLD Of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon,
Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue,
Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts,
Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence,
Why do you keep wishes on your faces all day long,
Wishes like women with halfforgotten lovers going to new cities?
What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds, crying down on the north wind in September,
acres of birds
spotting the air going south?
Is there something finished? And some new beginning on the way?
ILLINOIS FARMER
Cornhuskers
AUTUMN MOVEMENT 11
Page No 16
BURY this old Illinois farmer with respect.
He slept the Illinois nights of his life after days of work in Illinois cornfields.
Now he goes on a long sleep.
The wind he listened to in the cornsilk and the tassels, the wind that combed his red beard zero
mornings when the snow
lay white on the yellow ears in the bushel basket at the corncrib,
The same wind will now blow over the place here where his hands must dream of Illinois corn.
HITS AND RUNS
I REMEMBER the Chillicothe ball players grappling the Rock Island ball players in a sixteeninning
game ended by
darkness.
And the shoulders of the Chillicothe players were a red smoke against the sundown and the shoulders
of the Rock Island
players were a yellow smoke against the sundown.
And the umpire's voice was hoarse calling balls and strikes and outs and the umpire's throat fought in
the dust for a song.
VILLAGE IN LATE SUMMER
Lips halfwilling in a doorway.
Lips halfsinging at a window.
Eyes halfdreaming in the walls.
Feet halfdancing in a kitchen.
Even the clocks halfyawn the hours
And the farmers make halfanswers.
BLIZZARD NOTES
I DON'T blame the kettle drumsthey are hungry.
And the snare drumsI know what they wantthey are empty too.
Cornhuskers
HITS AND RUNS 12
Page No 17
And the harring booming bass drumsthey are hungriest of all.
The howling spears of the Northwest die down.
The lullabies of the Southwest get a chance, a mother song.
A cradle moon rides out of a torn hole in the ragbag top of the sky.
SUNSET FROM OMAHA HOTEL WINDOW
INTO the blue river hills
The red sun runners go
And the long sand changes
And today is a goner
And today is not worth haggling over.
Here in Omaha
The gloaming is bitter
As in Chicago
Or Kenosha.
The long sand changes.
Today is a goner.
Time knocks in another brass nail.
Another yellow plunger shoots the dark.
Constellations
Wheeling over Omaha
As in Chicago
Or Kenosha.
The long sand is gone
and all the talk is stars.
They circle in a dome over Nebraska.
STILL LIFE
Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car.
Cornhuskers
SUNSET FROM OMAHA HOTEL WINDOW 13
Page No 18
Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.
Take in the prairie fight and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun.
A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the postoffice never blink an eye.
A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on a black wall map, never blink an eye.
A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his place at a window with the serenity of
a bronze statue on a
dark night when lovers pass whispering.
BAND CONCERT
BAND concert public square Nebraska city. Flowing and circling dresses, summerwhite dresses.
Faces, flesh tints flung
like sprays of cherry blossoms. And gigglers, God knows, gigglers, rivaling the pony whinnies of the
Livery Stable Blues.
Cowboy rags and nigger rags. And boys driving sorrel horses hurl a cornfield laughter at the girls in
dresses,
summerwhite dresses. Amid the cornet staccato and the tuba oompa, gigglers, God knows, gigglers
daffy with life's razzle
dazzle.
Slow goodnight melodies and Home Sweet Home. And the snare drummer bookkeeper in a
hardware store nods hello to
the daughter of a railroad conductor a giggler, God knows, a gigglerand the summerwhite
dresses filter fanwise out of
the public square.
The crushed strawberries of ice cream soda places, the night wind in cottonwoods and willows, the
lattice shadows of
doorsteps and porches, these know more of the story.
THREE PIECES ON THE SMOKE OF AUTUMN
SMOKE Of autumn is on it all.
The streamers loosen and travel.
The red west is stopped with a gray haze.
They fill the ash trees, they wrap the oaks,
They make a longtailed rider
Cornhuskers
BAND CONCERT 14
Page No 19
In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star.
Three muskrats swim west on the Desplaines River.
There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river; it is dusk; and the muskrats one by one go on patrol
routes west.
Around each slippery padding rat, a fan of ripples; in the silence of dusk a faint wash of ripples, the
padding of the rats
going west, in a dark and shivering river gold.
(A newspaper in my pocket says the Germans pierce the Italian line; I have letters from poets and
sculptors in Greenwich
Village; I have letters from an ambulance man in France and an I. W. W. man in Vladivostok.)
I lean on an ash and watch the lights fall, the red ember glow, and three muskrats swim west in a fan
of ripples on a sheet
of river gold.
Better the blue silence and the gray west,
The autumn mist on the river,
And not any hate and not any love,
And not anything at all of the keen and the deep:
Only the peace of a dog head on a barn floor,
And the new corn shoveled in bushels
And the pumpkins brought from the corn rows,
Umber lights of the dark,
Umber lanterns of the loam dark.
Here a dog head dreams.
Not any hate, not any love.
Not anything but dreams.
Brother of dusk and umber.
LOCALITIES
WAGON WHEEL GAP is a place I never saw
And Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of Cripple Creek.
Redshirted miners picking in the sluices,
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Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets,
The flybynight towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo,
The nightcool limestone white of Death Valley,
The straight drop of eight hundred feet
From a shelf road in the Hasiampa Valley:
Men and places they are I never saw.
I have seen three White Horse taverns,
One in Illinois, one in Pennsylvania,
One in a timberhid road of Wisconsin.
I bought cheese and crackers
Between sun showers in a place called White Pigeon
Nestling with a blacksmith shop, a postoffice,
And a berrycrate factory, where four roads cross.
On the Pecatonica River near Freeport
I have seen boys run barefoot in the leaves
Throwing clubs at the walnut trees
In the yellowandgold of autumn,
And there was a brown mash dry on the inside of their hands.
On the Cedar Fork Creek of Knox County
I know how the fingers of late October
Loosen the hazel nuts.
I know the brown eyes of halfopen hulls.
I know boys named Lindquist, Swanson, Hildebrand.
I remember their cries when the nuts were ripe.
And some are in machine shops; some are in the navy;
And some are not on payrolls anywhere.
Their mothers are through waiting for them to come home.
CABOOSE THOUGHTS
IT'S going to come out all rightdo you know?
The sun, the birds, the grassthey know.
They get alongand we'll get along.
Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won't come,
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won't come.
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CABOOSE THOUGHTS 16
Page No 21
There will be accidents.
I know accidents are coming.
Smashups, signals wrong, washouts, trestles rotten,
Red and yellow accidents.
But somehow and somewhere the end of the run
The train gets put together again
And the caboose and the green tail lights
Fade down the right of way like a new white hope:
I never heard a mockingbird in Kentucky
Spilling its heart in the morning.
I never saw the snow on Chimborazo.
It's a high white Mexican hat, I hear.
I never had supper with Abe Lincoln.
Nor a dish of soup with Jim Hill.
But I've been around.
I know some of the boys here who can go a little.
I know girls good for a burst of speed any time.
I heard Williams and Walker
Before Walker died in the bughouse.
I knew a mandolin player
Working in a barber shop in an Indiana town,
And he thought he had a million dollars.
I knew a hotel girl in Des Moines.
She had eyes; I saw her and said to myself
The sun rises and the sun sets in her eyes.
I was her steady and her heart went pitapat.
We took away the money for a prize waltz at a Brotherhood dance.
She had eyes; she was safe as the bridge over the Mississippi at Burlington; I married her.
Last summer we took the cushions going west.
Pike's Peak is a big old stone, believe me.
It's fastened down; something you can count on.
It's going to come out all rightdo you know?
The sun, the birds, the grassthey know.
They get alongand we'll get along.
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CABOOSE THOUGHTS 17
Page No 22
ALIX
THE mare Alix breaks the world's trotting record one day. I see her heels flash down the dust of an
Illinois race track on a
summer afternoon. I see the timekeepers put their heads together over stopwatches, and call to the
grand stand a split
second is clipped off the old world's record and a new world's record fixed.
I see the mare Alix led away by men in undershirts and streaked faces. Dripping Alix in foam of
white on the harness and
shafts. And the men in undershirts kiss her ears and rub her nose, and tie blankets on her, and take her
away to have the
sweat sponged.
I see the grand stand jammed with prairie people yelling themselves hoarse. Almost the grand stand
and the crowd of
thousands are one pair of legs and one voice standing up and yelling hurrah.
I see the driver of Alix and the owner smothered in a fury of handshakes, a mob of caresses. I see the
wives of the driver
and owner smothered in a crush of white summer dresses and parasols.
Hours later, at sundown, gray dew creeping on the sod and sheds, I see Alix again:
Dark, shiningvelvet Alix,
Nightsky Alix in a gray blanket,
Led back and forth by a nigger.
Velvet and nighteyed Alix
With slim legs of steel.
And I want to rub my nose against the nose of the mare Alix.
POTATO BLOSSOM SONGS AND JIGS
Rum tiddy um,
tiddy um,
tiddy um tum tum.
My knees are looselike, my feet want to sling their selves.
I feel like tickling you under the chinhoneyand aasking: Why Does a Chicken Cross the Road?
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When the hens are alaying eggs, and the roosters pluckpluckputakut and youhoneyput
new potatoes and gravy on
the table, and there ain't too much rain or too little:
Say, why do I feel so gabby?
Why do I want to holler all over the place?
Do you remember I held empty hands to you
and I said all is yours
the handfuls of nothing?
I ask you for white blossoms.
I bring a concertina after sunset under the apple trees.
I bring out "The Spanish Cavalier" and "In the Gloaming, O My Darling."
The orchard here is near and homelike.
The oats in the valley run a mile.
Between are the green and marching potato vines.
The lightning bugs go crisscross carrying a zigzag of fire: the potato bugs are asleep under their stiff
and yellowstriped wings: here romance stutters to the western stars, "Excuse... me..."
Old foundations of rotten wood.
An old barn donefor and out of the wormholes tenlegged roaches shook up and scared by sunlight,
So a pickax digs a long tooth with a short memory.
Fire can not eat this rubbish till it has lain in the sun.
The story lags.
The story has no connections.
The story is nothing but a lot of banjo plinka planka plunks.
The roan horse is young and will learn: the roan horse buckles into harness and feels the foam on the
collar at the end of a
haul: the roan horse points four legs to the sky and rolls in the red clover: the roan horse has a rusty
jag of hair between
the ears hanging to a white star between the eyes.
In Burlington long ago
And later again in Ashtabula
I said to myself:
I wonder how far Ophelia went with Hamlet.
What else was there Shakespeare never told?
There must have been something.
If I go bugs I want to do it like Ophelia.
There was class to the way she went out of her head.
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ALIX 19
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Does a famous poet eat watermelon?
Excuse me, ask me something easy.
I have seen farmhands with their faces in fried catfish on a Monday morning.
And the Japanese, twolegged like us,
The Japanese bring slices of watermelon into pictures.
The black seeds make oval polka dots on the pink meat.
Why do I always think of niggers and buckandwing dancing whenever I see watermelon?
Summer mornings on the docks I walk among bushel peach baskets piled ten feet high.
Summer mornings I smell new wood and the river wind along with peaches.
I listen to the steamboat whistle honghonging, honghonging across the town.
And once I saw a teameo straddling a street with a hayrack load of melons.
Niggers play banjos because they want to.
The explanation is easy.
It is the same as why people pay fifty cents for tickets to a policemen's masquerade ball or a
grocersand butchers' picnic
with a fat man's foot race.
It is the same as why boys buy a nickel's worth of peanuts and eat them and then buy another nickel's
worth.
Newsboys shooting craps in a back alley have a fugitive understanding of the scientific principle
involved.
The jockey in a yellow satin shirt and scarlet boots, riding a sorrel pony at the county fair, has a grasp
of the theory.
It is the same as why boys go running licketysplit away from a schoolroom geography lesson in
April when the
crawfishes come out and the young frogs are calling and the pussywillows and the cattails know
something about
geography themselves.
I ask you for white blossoms.
I offer you memories and people.
I offer you a fire zigzag over the green and marching vines.
I bring a concertina after supper under the homelike apple trees.
I make up songs about things to look at: potato blossoms in summer night mist filling the garden with
white spots; a
cavalryman's yellow silk handkerchief stuck in a flannel pocket over the left side of the shirt, over the
ventricles of blood,
over the pumps of the heart.
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ALIX 20
Page No 25
Bring a concertina after sunset under the apple trees.
Let romance stutter to the western stars, "Excuse ...me..."
LOAM
In the loam we sleep,
In the cool moist loam,
To the lull of years that pass
And the break of stars,
From the loam, then,
The soft warm loam,
We rise:
To shape of rose leaf,
Of face and shoulder.
We stand, then,
To a whiff of life,
Lifted to the silver of the sun
Over and out of the loam
A day.
MANITOBA CHILDE ROLAND
LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house and whistling a wolf song
under the eaves.
I sat in a leather rocker and read to a sixyearold girl the Browning poem, Childe Roland to the
Dark Tower Came.
And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not understand.
A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and nothing happensand he goes on and onand
it's all lonesome and
empty and nobody home.
And he goes on and onand nothing happensand he comes on a horse's skull, dry bones of a dead
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horse and you know
more than ever it's all lonesome and empty and nobody home.
And the man raises a horn to his lips and blowshe fixes a proud neck and forehead toward the
empty sky and the empty
landand blows one last wondercry.
And as the shuttling automatic memory of man clicks off its results willynilly and inevitable as the
snick of a mousetrap
or the trajectory of a 42centimeter projectile,
I flash to the form of a man to his hips in snow drifts of Manitoba and Minnesotain the sled derby
run from Winnipeg to
Minneapolis.
He is beaten in the race the first day out of Winnipeg the lead dog is eaten by four team
matesand the man goes on and
onrunning while the other racers riderunning while the other racers sleep
Lost in a blizzard twentyfour hours, repeating a circle of travel hour after hourfighting the dogs
who dig holes in the
snow and whimper for sleep pushing onrunning and walking five hundred miles to the end of
the racealmost a
winnerone toe frozen, feet blistered and frostbitten.
And I know why a thousand young men of the Northwest meet him in the finishing miles and yell
cheers I know why
judges of the race call him a winner and give him a special prize even though he is a loser.
I know he kept under his shirt and around his thudding heart amid the blizzards of five hundred miles
that one last
wondercry of Childe Rolandand I told the sixyearold girl all about it.
And while the January wind was ripping at the shingles and whistling a wolf song under the caves,
her eyes had the haze of
autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not understand.
WILDERNESS
THERE is a wolf in me ... fangs pointed for tearing gashes ... a red tongue for raw meat ... and the hot
lapping of bloodI
keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
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There is a fox in me ... a silvergray fox ... I sniff and guess... I pick things out of the wind and air ...
I nose in the dark
night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers... I circle and loop and doublecross.
There is a hog in me ... a snout and a belly ... a machinery for eating and grunting... a machinery for
sleeping satisfied in
the sunI got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fish in me ... I know I came from saltblue watergates ... I scurried with shoals of herring...
I blew waterspouts
with porpoises ...before land was... before the water went down... before Noah... before the first
chapter of Genesis.
There is a baboon in me... clamberingclawed ... dogfaced ... yawping a galoot's hunger ... hairy
under the armpits ...
here are the
hawkeyed hankering men... here are the blond and blueeyed women ... here they hide curled
asleep waiting ... ready to
snarl and kill ...ready to sing and give milk... waitingI keep the baboon because the wilderness
says so.
There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird... and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my
dreams and fights
among the Sierra crags of what I want... and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before
the dew is gone,
warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my
wishesAnd I got the
eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.
O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my redvalve
heartand I got something
else: it is a manchild heart, a womanchild heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from
GodKnowsWhere: it
is going to GodKnowsWhereFor I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and
work: I am a pal of
the world: I came from the wilderness.
PERSONS HALF KNOWN
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CHICAGO POET
I SALUTED a nobody.
I saw him in a lookingglass.
He smiledso did I.
He crumpled the skin on his forehead, frowningso did I.
Everything I did he did.
I said, "Hello, I know you."
And I was a liar to say so.
Ah, this. lookingglass man!
Liar, fool, dreamer, playactor,
Soldier, dusty drinker of dust
Ah! he will go with me
Down the dark stairway
When nobody else is looking,
When everybody else is gone.
He locks his elbow in mine,
I lose allbut not him.
FIRELOGS
NANCY HANKS dreams by the fire;
Dreams, and the logs sputter,
And the yellow tongues climb.
Red lines lick their way in flickers.
Oh, sputter, logs.
Oh, dream, Nancy.
Time now for a beautiful child.
Time now for a tall man to come.
REPETITIONS
THEY are crying salt tears
Over the beautiful beloved body
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Of Inez Milholland,
Because they are glad she lived,
Because she loved openarmed,
Throwing love for a cheap thing
Belonging to everybody
Cheap as sunlight,
And morning air.
ADELAIDE CRAPSEY
AMONG the bumblebees in redtop hay, a freckled field of browneyed Susans dripping yellow
leaves in July,
I read your heart in a book.
And your mouth of blue pansyI know somewhere I have seen it rainshattered.
And I have seen a woman with her head flung between her naked knees, and her head held there
listening to the sea, the
great naked sea shouldering a load of salt.
And the blue pansy mouth sang to the sea:
Mother of God, I'm so little a thing,
Let me sing longer,
Only a little longer.
And the sea shouldered its salt in long gray combers hauling new shapes on the beach sand.
YOUNG BULLFROGS
JIMMY WIMBLETON listened a first week in June.
Ditches along prairie roads of Northern Illinois
Filled the arch of night with young bullfrog songs.
Infinite mathematical metronomic croaks rose and spoke,
Rose and sang, rose in a choir of puzzles.
They made his head ache with riddles of music.
They rested his head with beaten cadence.
Jimmy Wimbledon listened.
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MEMOIR OF A PROUD BOY
HE lived on the wings of storm.
The ashes are in Chihuahua.
Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado
Sprang a vengeance of Slav miners, Italians, Scots, Cornishmen, Yanks.
Killings ran under the spoken commands of this boy
With eighty men and rifles on a hogback mountain.
They killed swearing to remember
The shot and charred wives and children
In the burnt camp of Ludlow,
And Louis Tikas, the laughing Greek,
Plugged with a bullet, clubbed with a gun butt.
As a home war
It held the nation a week
And one or two million men stood together
And swore by the retribution of steel.
It was all accidental.
He lived flecking lint off coat lapels
Of men he talked with.
He kissed the miners' babies
And wrote a Denver paper
Of picket silhouettes on a mountain line.
He had no mother but Mother Jones
Crying from a jail window of Trinidad:
"All I want is room enough to stand
And shake my fist at the enemies of the human race."
Named by a grand jury as a murderer
He went to Chihuahua, forgot his old Scotch name,
Smoked cheroots with Pancho Villa
And wrote letters of Villa as a rock of the people.
How can I tell how Don Magregor went?
Three riders emptied lead into him.
He lay on the main street of an inland town.
A boy sat near all day throwing stones
To keep pigs away.
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The Villa men buried him in a pit
With twenty Carranzistas.
There is drama in that point ...
... the boy and the pigs.
Griffith would make a movie of it to fetch sobs.
Victor Herbert would have the drums whirr
In a weave with a high fiddlestring's single clamor.
"And the muchacho sat there all day throwing stones
To keep the pigs away," wrote Gibbons to the Tribune.
Somewhere in Chihuahua or Colorado
Is a leather bag of poems and short stories.
BILBEA
(From tablet writing, Babylonian excavations of 4th millennium B.C.)
BILBEA, I was in Babylon on Saturday night.
I saw nothing of you anywhere.
I was at the old place and the other girls were there, but no Bilbea.
Have you gone to another house? or city?
Why don't you write?
I was sorry. I walked home halfsick.
Tell me how it goes.
Send me some kind of a letter.
And take care of yourself.
SOUTHERN PACIFIC
HUNTINGTON sleeps in a house six feet long.
Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned.
Huntington dreams of ten thousand men saying: Yes, sir.
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Blithery sleeps in a house six feet long.
Blithery dreams of rails and ties he laid.
Blithery dreams of saying to Huntington: Yes, sir.
Huntington,
Blithery, sleep in houses six feet long.
WASHERWOMAN
THE washerwoman is a member of the Salvation Army.
And over the tub of suds rubbing underwear clean
She sings that Jesus will wash her sins away,
And the red wrongs she has done God and man
Shall be white as driven snow.
Rubbing underwear she sings of the Last Great Washday.
PORTRAIT OF A MOTOR CAR
IT'S a lean car... a longlegged dog of a car ... a grayghost eagle car.
The feet of it eat the dirt of a road... the wings of it eat the hills.
Danny the driver dreams of it when he sees women in red skirts and red sox in his sleep.
It is in Danny's life and runs in the blood of him ... a lean grayghost car.
GIRL IN A CAGE
HERE in a cage the dollars come down.
To the click of a tube the dollars tumble.
And out of a mouth the dollars run.
I finger the dollars,
Paper and silver,
Thousands a day.
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WASHERWOMAN 28
Page No 33
Some days it's fun
to finger the dollars.
Some days...
the dollars keep on
in a sob or a whisper:
A flame of rose in the hair,
A flame of silk at the throat.
BUFFALO BILL
BOY heart of Johnny Jonesaching today?
Aching, and Buffalo Bill in town?
Buffalo Bill and ponies, cowboys, Indians?
Some of us know
All about it, Johnny Jones.
Buffalo Bill is a slanting look of the eyes,
A slanting look under a hat on a horse.
He sits on a horse and a passing look is fixed
On Johnny Jones, you and me, barelegged,
A slanting, passing, careless look under a hat on a horse.
Go clicketyclack, O pony hoofs along the street.
Come on and slant your eyes again, O Buffalo Bill.
Give us again the ache of our boy hearts.
Fill us again with the red love of prairies, dark nights, lonely wagons, and the crackcrack of rifles
sputtering flashes into
an ambush.
SIXTEEN MONTHS
ON the lips of the child Janet float changing dreams.
It is a thin spiral of blue smoke,
A morning campfire at a mountain lake.
On the lips of the child Janet,
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BUFFALO BILL 29
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Wisps of haze on ten miles of corn,
Young light blue calls to young light gold of morning.
CHILD MARGARET
THE child Margaret begins to write numbers on a Saturday morning, the first numbers formed under
her wishing child
fingers.
All the numbers come wellborn, shaped in figures assertive for a frieze in a child's room.
Both 1 and 7 are straightforward, military, filled with lunge and attack, erect in shoulderstraps.
The 6 and 9 salute as dancing sisters, elder and younger, and 2 is a trapeze actor singing to handclaps
All the numbers are wellborn, only 3 has a hump on its back and 8 is knockkneed.
The child Margaret kisses all once and gives two kisses to 3 and 8.
(Each number is a brannew rag doll... O in the wishing fingers millions of rag dolls, millions and
millions of new rag
dolls!!)
SINGING NIGGER
YOUR bony head, Jazbo, O dock walloper,
Those grappling hooks, those wheelbarrow handlers,
The dome and the wings of you, nigger,
The red roof and the door of you,
I know where your songs came from.
I know why God listens to your, "Walk All Over God's Heaven."
I heard you shooting craps, "My baby's going to have a new dress."
I heard you in the cinders, "I'm going to live anyhow until I die."
I saw five of you with a can of beer on a summer night and I listened to the five of you harmonizing
six ways to sing,
"Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield."
I went away asking where I come from.
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CHILD MARGARET 30
Page No 35
LEATHER LEGGINGS
LEATHER LEGGINGS
THEY have taken the ball of earth
and made it a little thing.
They were held to the land and horses; they were held to the little seas.
They have changed and shaped and welded; they have broken the old tools and made new ones; they
are ranging the white
scarves of cloudland; they are bumping the sunken bells of the Carthaginians and Phoenicians:
they are handling
the strongest sea
as a thing to be handled.
The earth was a call that mocked; it is belted with wires and meshed with steel; from Pittsburg to
Vladivostok is an iron
ride on a moving house; from
Jerusalem to Tokyo is a reckoned span; and they talk at night in the storm and salt, the
wind and the war.
They have counted the miles to the Sun and Canopus; they have weighed a small blue star that comes
in the southeast
corner of the sky on a foretold errand.
We shall search the sea again.
We shall search the stars again.
There are no bars across the way.
There is no end to the plan and the clue, the hunt and the thirst.
The motors are drumming, the leather leggings and the leather coats wait:
Under the sea
and out to the stars
we go.
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LEATHER LEGGINGS 31
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PRAYERS OF STEEL
LAY me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take redhot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars.
ALWAYS THE MOB
JESUS emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a high rock and
dropped off and down
into the sea: a mob.
The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering fourfooted in the sunset mist to the dark, they go one
way, they hunt one
sleep, they find one pocket of grass for all.
Karnak? Pyramids? Sphinx paws tall as a coolie?
Tombs kept for kings and sacred cows? A mob.
Young roast pigs and naked dancing girls of Belshazzar, the room where a thousand sat guzzling
when a hand wrote:
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin? A mob.
The honeycomb of green that won the sun as the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh, flew to its shape at
the hands of a mob that
followed the fingers of Nebuchadnezzar: a mob of one hand and one plan.
Stones of a circle of hills at Athens, staircases of a mountain in Peru, scattered clans of marble
dragons in China: each a
mob on the rim of a sunrise: hammers and wagons have them now.
Locks and gates of Panama? The Union Pacific crossing deserts and tunneling mountains? The
Woolworth
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on land and the Titanic at sea? Lighthouses blinking a coast line from Labrador to Key West?
Pigiron bars piled on a barge whistling in a fog off Sheboygan? A mob: hammers and
wagons have them tomorrow.
The mob? A typhoon tearing loose an island from thousandyear moorings and bastions, shooting a
volcanic ash with a fire
tongue that licks up cities and peoples. Layers of worms eating rocks and forming loam and valley
floors for potatoes,
wheat, watermelons.
The mob? A jag of lightning, a geyser, a gravel mass loosening...
The mob... kills or builds... the mob is Attila or Ghengis Khan, the mob is Napoleon, Lincoln.
I am born in the mobI die in the mobthe same goes for youI don't care who you are.
I cross the sheets of fire in No Man's land for you, my brotherI slip a steel tooth into your throat,
you my brotherI die
for you and I kill youIt is a twisted and gnarled thing, a crimson wool:
One more arch of stars,
In the night of our mist,
In the night of our tears.
JABBERERS
I RISE out of my depths with my language.
You rise out of your depths with your language.
Two tongues from the depths,
Alike only as a yellow cat and a green parrot are alike,
Fling their staccato tantalizations
Into a wildcat jabber
Over a gossamer web of unanswerables.
The second and the third silence,
Even the hundredth silence,
Is better than no silence at all
(Maybe this is a jabber tooare we at it again, you and I?)
I rise out of my depths with my language.
You rise out of your depths with your language.
One thing there is much of; the name men call it by is time; into this gulf our syllabic
pronunciamentos empty by the way
rockets of fire curve and are gone on the night sky; into this gulf the jabberings go as the shower at a
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JABBERERS 33
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scissors grinder's
wheel ....
CARTOON
I AM making a Cartoon of a Woman. She is the People.
She is the Great Dirty Mother.
And Many Children hang on her Apron, crawl at her
Feet, snuggle at her Breasts.
INTERIOR
IN the cool of the night time
The clocks pick off the points
And the mainsprings loosen.
They will need winding.
One of these days
they will need winding.
Rabelais in red boards,
Walt Whitman in green,
Hugo in tencent paper covers,
Here they stand on shelves
In the cool of the night time
And there is nothing....
To be said against them....
Or for them...
In the cool of the night time
And the docks.
A man in pigeongray pyjamas.
The open window begins at his feet
And goes taller than his head.
Eight feet high is the pattern.
Moon and mist make an oblong layout.
Silver at the man's bare feet.
He swings one foot in a moon silver.
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And it costs nothing.
(One more day of bread and work.
One more day ..... so much rags .
The man barefoot in moon silver
Mutters "You" and "You"
To things hidden
In the cool of the night time,
In Rabelais, Whitman, Hugo,
In an oblong of moon mist.
Out from the window... prairielands.
Moon mist whitens a golf ground.
Whiter yet is a limestone quarry.
The crickets keep on chirring.
Switch engines of the Great Western
Sidetrack box cars, make up trains
For Weehawken, Oskaloosa, Saskatchewan;
The cattle, the coal, the corn, must go
In the night ... on the prairielands.
Chuffchuff go the pulses.
They beat in the cool of the night time.
Chuffchuff and chuffchuff...
These heartbeats travel the night a mile
And touch the moon silver at the window
And the hones of the man.
It costs nothing.
Rabelais in red boards,
Whitman in green,
Hugo in tencent paper covers,
Here they stand on shelves
In the cool of the night time
And the clocks.
STREET WINDOW
THE pawnshop man knows hunger,
And how far hunger has eaten the heart
Of one who comes with an old keepsake.
Cornhuskers
STREET WINDOW 35
Page No 40
Here are wedding rings and baby bracelets,
Scarf pins and shoe buckles, jeweled garters,
Oldfashioned knives with inlaid handles,
Watches of old gold and silver,
Old coins worn with fingermarks.
They tell stories.
PALLADIUMS
IN the newspaper officewho are the spooks?
Who wears the mythic coat invisible?
Who pussyfoots from desk to desk
with a speaking forefinger?
Who gumshoes amid the copy paper
with a whispering thumb?
Speak softlythe sacred cows may hear.
Speak easythe sacred cows must be fed.
CLOCKS
HERE is a face that says halfpast seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on,
whether a funeral or a
picnic crowd passes.
A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides
of the man of the
house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams.
A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a
sleepingcar between
onenight stands.
One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quartermile away who
believe it when other clocks
fail.
And of course...there are wrist watches over the pulses of airmen eager to go to France ...
Cornhuskers
PALLADIUMS 36
Page No 41
LEGENDS
CLOWNS DYING
FIVE circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in
a last gesture of
hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind
rougered lips and
powderwhite face.
STEAMBOAT BILL
When the boilers of the Robert E. Lee exploded, a steamboat winner of many races on the
Mississippi went to the bottom
of the river and never again saw the wharves of Natchez and New Orleans.
And a legend lives on that two gamblers were blown toward the sky and during their journey laid
bets on which of the two
would go higher and which would be first to set foot on the turf of the earth again.
FOOT AND MOUTH PLAGUE
When the mysterious foot and mouth epidemic ravaged the cattle of Illinois, Mrs. Hector Smith wept
bitterly over the
government killing forty of her soft eyed Jersey cows; through the newspapers she wept over her
loss for millions of
readers in the Great
Northwest.
SEVENS
The lady who has had seven lawful husbands has written seven years for a famous newspaper telling
how to find love and
keep it: seven thousand hungry girls in the Mississippi Valley have read the instructions seven years
and found neither
illicit loves nor lawful husbands.
PROFITEER
Cornhuskers
LEGENDS 37
Page No 42
I who saw ten strong young men die anonymously, I who saw ten old mothers hand over their sons to
the nation
anonymously, I who saw ten thousand touch the sunlit silver finalities of undistinguished human
glorywhy do I sneeze
sardonically at a bronze drinking fountain named after one who participated in the war vicariously
and bought ten farms?
PSALM OF THOSE WHO GO FORTH BEFORE DAYLIGHT
THE policeman buys shoes slow and careful; the teamster buys gloves slow and careful; they take
care of their feet and
hands; they live on their feet and hands.
The milkman never argues; he works alone and no one speaks to him; the city is asleep when he is on
the job; he puts a
bottle on six hundred porches and calls it a day's work; he climbs two hundred wooden stairways;
two horses are company
for him; he never argues.
The rollingmill men and the sheetsteel men are brothers of cinders; they empty cinders out of their
shoes after the day's
work; they ask their wives to fix burnt holes in the knees of their trousers; their necks and ears are
covered with a smut;
they scour their necks and ears; they are brothers of cinders.
HORSES AND MEN IN RAIN
LET us sit by a hissing steam radiator a winter's day, gray wind pattering frozen raindrops on the
window,
And let us talk about milk wagon drivers and grocery delivery boys.
Let us keep our feet in wool slippers and mix hot punchesand talk about mail carriers and
messenger boys slipping along
the icy sidewalks.
Let us write of olden, golden days and hunters of the
Holy Grail and men called "knights" riding horses in the rain, in the cold frozen rain for
Cornhuskers
PSALM OF THOSE WHO GO FORTH BEFORE DAYLIGHT 38
Page No 43
ladies they loved.
A roustabout hunched on a coal wagon goes by, icicles drip on his hat rim, sheets of ice wrapping the
hunks of coal, the
caravanserai a gray blur in slant of rain.
Let us nudge the steam radiator with our wool slippers and write poems of Launcelot, the hero, and
Roland, the hero, and
all the olden golden men who rode horses in the rain.
QUESTIONNAIRE
HAVE I told any man to be a liar for my sake?
Have I sold ice to the poor in summer and coal to the poor in winter for the sake of daughters who
nursed brindle bull
terriers and led with a leash their dogs clothed in plaid wool jackets?
Have I given any man an earful too much of my talk or asked any man to take a snootful of booze
on my account?
Have I put wool in my own ears when men tried to tell me what was good for me? Have I been a bum
listener?
Have I taken dollars from the living and the unborn while I made speeches on the retributions that
shadow the heels of the
dishonest?
Have I done any good under cover? Or have I always put it in the show windows and the
newspapers?
NEAR KEOKUK
THIRTYTWO Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek.
Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water.
All one midsummer day ten hours the Greeks stand in leather shoes shoveling gravel.
Now they hold their toes and ankles to the drift of running water.
Then they go to the bunk cars and eat mulligan and prune sauce,
Smoke one or two pipefuls, look at the stars, tell smutty stories
About men and women they have known, countries they have seen,
Railroads they have built and then the deep sleep of children.
Cornhuskers
QUESTIONNAIRE 39
Page No 44
SLANTS AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK
A Forefinger of stone, dreamed by a sculptor, points to the sky.
It says: This way! this way!
Four lions snore in stone at the corner of the shaft.
They too are the dream of a sculptor.
They too say: This way! this way!
The street cars swing at a curve.
The middleclass passengers witness low life.
The car windows frame low life all day in pictures.
Two Italian cellar delicatessens sell red and green peppers.
The Florida bananas furnish a burst of yellow.
The lettuce and the cabbage give a green.
Boys play marbles in the cinders.
The boys' hands need washing.
The boys are glad; they fight among each other.
A plank bridge leaps the Lehigh Valley railroad.
Then acres of steel rails, freight cars, smoke,
And then ... the blue lake shore
... Erie with Norse blue eyes... and the white Sun.
FLAT LANDS
FLAT lands on the end of town where real estate men are crying new subdivisions,
The sunsets pour blood and fire over you hundreds and hundreds of nights, flat landsblood and fire
of sunsets thousands
of years have been pouring over you.
And the stars follow the sunsets. One gold star. A shower of blue stars. Blurs of white and gray stars.
Vast marching processions of stars arching over you flat lands where frogs sob this April
night.
"Lots for SaleEasy Terms" run letters painted on a boardand the stars wheel onward, the frogs
sob this April night.
Cornhuskers
SLANTS AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK 40
Page No 45
LAWYER
WHEN the jury files in to deliver a verdict after weeks of direct and cross examinations, hot clashes
of lawyers and cool
decisions of the judge,
There are points of high silencetwiddling of thumbs is at an endbailiffs near cuspidors take
fresh chews of tobacco and
waitand the clock has a chance for its ticking to be heard.
A lawyer for the defense clears his throat and holds himself ready if the word is "Guilty" to enter
motion for a new trial,
speaking in a soft voice, speaking in a voice slightly colored with bitter wrongs mingled with
monumental patience,
speaking with mythic Atlas shoulders of many preposterous, unjust circumstances.
THREE BALLS
JABOWSKY'S place is on a side street and only the rain washes the dusty three balls.
When I passed the window a month ago, there rested in proud isolation:
A family bible with hasps of brass twisted off, a wooden clock with pendulum gone,
And a porcelain crucifix with the glaze nicked where the left elbow of Jesus is represented.
I passed today and they were all there, resting in proud isolation, the clock and the crucifix saying
no more and no less
than before, and a yellow cat sleeping in a patch of sun alongside the family bible with the hasps off.
Only the rain washes the dusty three balls in front of
Jabowsky's place on a side street.
CHICKS
THE chick in the egg picks at the shell , cracks open one oval world, and enters another oval world.
"Cheep ... cheep... cheep" is the salutation of the newcomer, the emigrant, the casual at the gates of
the new world.
" Cheep... cheep"... from oval to oval, sunset to sunset, star to star.
Cornhuskers
LAWYER 41
Page No 46
It is at the door of this house, this teeny weeny eggshell exit, it is here men say a riddle and jeer each
other: who are you?
where do you go from here?
In the academies many books, at the circus many sacks of peanuts, at the club rooms many cigar
butts.)
" Cheep ... cheep"... from oval to oval, sunset to sunset, star to star.
HUMDRUM
IF I had a million lives to live
and a million deaths to die
in a million humdrum worlds,
I'd like to change my name and have a new house number to go by
each and every time I died
and started life all over again.
I wouldn't want the same name every time
and the same old house number always,
dying a million deaths,
dying one by one a million times:
would you?
or you?
or you?
JOLIET
ON the one hand the steel works.
On the other hand the penitentiary.
Sante F trains and Alton trains
Between smokestacks on the west
And gray walls on the east.
And Lockport down the river.
Part of the valley is God's.
And part is man's.
Cornhuskers
HUMDRUM 42
Page No 47
The river course laid out
A thousand years ago.
The canals ten years back.
The sun on two canals and one river
Makes three stripes of silver
Or copper and gold
Or shattered sunflower leaves.
Talons of an iceberg
Scraped out this valley.
Claws of an avalanche loosed here.
KNUCKS
IN Abraham Lincoln's city,
Where they remember his lawyer's shingle,
The place where they brought him
Wrapped in battle flags,
Wrapped in the smoke of memories
From Tallahassee to the Yukon,
The place now where the shaft of his tomb
Points white against the blue prairie dome,
In Abraham Lincoln's city ... I saw knucks
In the window of Mister Fischman's secondhand store
On Second Street.
I went in and asked, "How much?"
"Thirty cents apiece," answered Mister Fischman.
And taking a box of new ones off a shelf
He filled anew the box in the showcase
And said incidentally, most casually
And incidentally:
"I sell a carload a month of these."
I slipped my fingers into a set of knucks,
Castiron knucks molded in a foundry pattern,
And there came to me a set of thoughts like these:
Mister Fischman is for Abe and the "malice to none" stuff,
And the street car strikers and the strikebreakers,
And the sluggers, gunmen, detectives, policemen,
Judges, utility heads, newspapers, priests, lawyers,
They are all for Abe and the "malice to none" stuff.
Cornhuskers
KNUCKS 43
Page No 48
I started for the door.
"Maybe you want a lighter pair,"
Came Mister Fischman's voice.
I opened the door ... and the voice again:
"You are a funny customer."
Wrapped in battle flags,
Wrapped in the smoke of memories,
This is the place they brought him,
This is Abraham Lincoln's home town.
TESTAMENT
I GIVE the undertakers permission to haul my body to the graveyard and to lay away all, the head,
the feet, the hands, all:
I know there is something left over they can not put away.
Let the nanny goats and the billy goats of the shanty people eat the clover over my grave and if any
yellow hair or any
blue smoke of flowers is good enough to grow over me let the dirtyfisted children of the shanty
people pick these flowers.
I have had my chance to live with the people who have too much and the people who have too little
and I chose one of the
two and I have told no man why.
HAUNTS
VALLEY SONG
Your eyes and the valley are memories.
Your eyes fire and the valley a bowl.
It was here a moonrise crept over the timberline.
It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down.
Cornhuskers
TESTAMENT 44
Page No 49
And your eyes and the moon swept the valley.
I will see you again tomorrow.
I will see you again in a million years.
I will never know your dark eyes again.
These are three ghosts I keep.
These are three sumachred dogs I run with.
All of it wraps and knots to a riddle:
I have the moon, the timberline, and you.
All three are goneand I keep all three.
IN TALL GRASS
BEES and a honeycomb in the dried head of a horse in a pasture cornera skull in the tall grass and
a buzz and a buzz of
the yellow honeyhunters.
And I ask no better a winding sheet
(over the earth and under the sun.)
Let the bees go honeyhunting with yellow blur of wings in the dome of my head, in the rumbling,
singing arch of my
skull.
Let there be wings and yellow dust and the drone of dreams of honeywho loses and
remembers?who keeps and forgets?
In a blue sheen of moon over the bones and under the hanging honeycomb the bees come home and
the bees sleep.
UPSTAIRS
I TOO have a garret of old playthings.
I have tin soldiers with broken arms upstairs.
I have a wagon and the wheels gone upstairs.
I have guns and a drum, a jumpingjack and a magic lantern.
And dust is on them and I never look at them upstairs.
Cornhuskers
IN TALL GRASS 45
Page No 50
I too have a garret of old playthings.
MONOSYLLABIC
LET me be monosyllabic today, O Lord.
Yesterday I loosed a snarl 'of words on a fool, on a child.
Today, let me be monosyllabic...a crony of old men who wash sunlight in their fingers and enjoy
slowpacing clocks.
FILMS
I HAVE kept all, not one is thrown away, not one given to the ragman, not one thrust in a corner with
a "Pff."
The red ones and the blue, the long ones in stripes, and each of the little black and white checkered
ones.
Keep them: I tell my heart: keep them another year, another ten years: they will be wanted again.
They came once, they came easy, they came like a first white flurry of snow in late October,
Like any sudden, presumptuous, beautiful thing, and they were cheap at the price, cheap like snow.
Here a red one and there a long one in yellow stripes,
O there shall be no ragman have these yet a year, yet ten years.
KREISLER
SELL me a violin, mister, of old mysterious wood.
Sell me a fiddle that has kissed dark nights on the forehead where men kiss sisters they love.
Sell me dried wood that has ached with passion clutching the knees and arms of a storm.
Sell me horsehair and rosin that has sucked at the breasts of the morning sun for milk.
Sell me something crushed in the heartsblood of pain readier than ever for one more song.
Cornhuskers
MONOSYLLABIC 46
Page No 51
THE SEA HOLD
THE sea is large,
The sea hold on a leg of land in the Chesapeake hugs an early sunset and a last morning star over the
oyster beds and the
late clam boats of lonely men.
Five white houses on a halfmile strip of land...five white dice rolled from a tube,
Not so long ago...the sea was large...
And today the sea has lost nothing...it keeps all,
I am a loon about the sea,
I make so many sea songs, I cry so many sea cries, I forget so many sea songs and sea cries,
I am a loon about the sea,
So are five men I had a fish fry with once in a tarpaper shack trembling in a sand storm,
The sea knows more about them than they know themselves.
They know only how the sea hugs and will not let go.
The sea is large.
The sea must know more than any of us.
GOLDWING MOTH
A GOLDWING moth is between the scissors and the ink bottle on the desk
Last night it flew hundreds of circles around a glass bulb and a flame wire.
The wings are a soft gold; it is the gold of illuminated initials in manuscripts of the medieval monks.
LOIN CLOTH
BODY of Jesus taken down from the cross
Carved in ivory by a lover of Christ,
It is a child's handful you are here,
The breadth of a man's finger,
And this ivory loin cloth
Speaks an interspersal in the day's work,
Cornhuskers
THE SEA HOLD 47
Page No 52
The carver's prayer and whim
And Christlove.
HEMLOCK AND CEDAR
THIN sheets of blue smoke among white slabs ... near the shingle mill ... winter morning.
Falling of a dry leaf might be heard... circular steel tears through a log.
Slope of woodland ... brown ... soft... tinge of blue such as pansy eyes.
Farther, field fires ... funnel of yellow smoke ... spellings of other yellow in corn stubble.
Bobsled on a downhill road ... February snow mud ...horses steaming...Oscar the driver sings
ragtime under a spot of red
seen a mile ... the red wool yarn of Oscar's stocking cap is seen from the shingle mill to the ridge of
hemlock and cedar.
SUMMER SHIRT SALE
THE summer shirt sale of a downtown haberdasher is glorified in a showwindow
slang: everybody understands the
language: red dots, yellow circles, blue anchors, and dovebrown hooks, these perform explosions in
color: stripes and
checks fight for the possession of front lines and salients: detectives, newsies, teameoes, niggers, all
stop, look, and listen:
the shirt sale and the show window kick at the street with a noise joyous as a clog dancer: the
ensemble is a challenge to
the ghost who walks on paydays.
MEDALLION
THE brass medallion profile of your face I keep always.
It is not jingling with loose change in my pockets.
It is not stuck up in a show place on the office wall.
I carry it in a special secret pocket in the day
Cornhuskers
HEMLOCK AND CEDAR 48
Page No 53
And it is under my pillow at night.
The brass came from a long ways off: it was up against hell and high water, fire and flood, before the
face was put on it.
It is the side of a head; a woman wishes; a woman waits; a woman swears behind silent lips that the
sea will bring home
what is gone.
BRICKLAYER LOVE
I THOUGHT of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer and you a woman who loves the man
who runs a drug store.
I don't care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I used to and I sing slower handling the trowel
afternoons.
When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky and the mortar boards go wrong, I think of you.
ASHURNATSIRPAL III
(From Babylonian tablet, 4,000 years Before Christ)
THREE walls around the town of Tela when I came.
They expected everything of those walls;
Nobody in the town came out to kiss my feet.
I knocked the walls down, killed three thousand soldiers,
Took away cattle and sheep, took all the loot in sight,
And burned special captives.
Some of the soldiersI cut off hands and feet.
OthersI cut off ears and fingers.
SomeI put out the eyes.
I made a pyramid of heads.
I strung heads on trees circling the town.
When I got through with it
There wasn't much left of the town of Tela.
Cornhuskers
BRICKLAYER LOVE 49
Page No 54
MAMMY HUMS
THIS is the song I rested with:
The fight shoulder of a strong man I leaned on.
The face of the rain that drizzled on the short neck of a canal boat.
The eyes of a child who slept while death went over and under.
The petals of peony pink that fluttered in a shot of wind come and gone.
This is the song I rested with:
Head, heels, and fingers rocked to the nigger mammy humming of it, to the mileoff steamboat
landing whistle of it.
The murmurs run with bees' wings
in a late summer sun.
They go and come with white surf
slamming on a beach all day.
Get this.
And then you may sleep with a late afternoon slumber sun.
Then you may slip your head in an elbow knowing nothingonly sleep.
If so you sleep in the house of our song,
If so you sleep under the apple trees of our song,
Then the face of sleep must be the one face you were looking for.
BRINGERS
COVER me over
In dusk and dust and dreams.
Cover me over
And leave me alone.
Cover me over,
You tireless, great.
Hear me and cover me,
Bringers of dusk and dust and dreams.
Cornhuskers
MAMMY HUMS 50
Page No 55
CRIMSON RAMBLER
Now that a crimson rambler
begins to crawl over the house
of our two lives
Now that a red curve
winds across the shingles
Now that hands
washed in early sunrises
climb and spill scarlet
on a white lattice weave
Now that a loop of blood
is written on our roof
and reaching around a chimney
How are the two lives of this house
to keep strong hands and strong hearts?
HAUNTS
THERE are places I go when I am strong.
One is a marsh pool where I used to go
with a longear hounddog.
One is a wild crabapple tree; I was there
a moonlight night with a girl.
The dog is gone; the girl is gone; I go to these
places when there is no other place to go.
Cornhuskers
CRIMSON RAMBLER 51
Page No 56
HAVE ME
HAVE me in the blue and the sun.
Have me on the open sea and the mountains.
When I go into the grass of the sea floor, I will go alone.
This is where I came fromthe chlorine and the salt are blood and bones.
It is here the nostrils rush the air to the lungs. It is here oxygen clamors to be let in.
And here in the root grass of the sea floor I will go alone.
Love goes far. Here love ends.
Have me in the blue and the sun.
FIRE DREAMS
(Written to be read aloud, if so be, Thanksgiving Day)
I REMEMBER here by the fire,
In the flickering reds and saffrons,
They came in a ramshackle tub,
Pilgrims in tall hats,
Pilgrims of iron jaws,
Drifting by weeks on beaten seas,
And the random chapters say
They were glad and sang to God.
And so
Since the ironjawed men sat down
And said, "Thanks, O God,"
For life and soup and a little less
Than a hobo handout today,
Since gray winds blew gray patterns of sleet on Plymouth
Rock,
Since the ironjawed men sang "Thanks, O God,"
You and I, O Child of the West,
Remember more than ever
November and the hunter's moon,
November and the yellowspotted hills.
And so
In the name of the ironjawed men
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HAVE ME 52
Page No 57
I will stand up and say yes till the finish is come and gone.
God of all broken hearts, empty hands, sleeping soldiers,
God of all starflung beaches of night sky,
I and my lovechild stand up together today and sing:
"Thanks, O God."
BABY FACE
WHITE MOON comes in on a baby face.
The shafts across her bed are flimmering.
Out on the land White Moon shines,
Shines and glimmers against gnarled shadows,
All silver to slow twisted shadows
Falling across the long road that runs from the house.
Keep a little of your beauty
And some of your flimmering silver
For her by the window tonight
Where you come in, White Moon.
THE YEAR
I
A STORM of white petals,
Buds throwing open baby fists
Into hands of broad flowers.
II
Red roses running upward,
Clambering to the clutches of life
Soaked in crimson.
III
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BABY FACE 53
Page No 58
Rabbles of tattered leaves
Holding golden flimsy hopes
Against the tramplings
Into the pits and gullies.
IV
Hoarfrost and silence:
Only the muffling
Of winds dark and lonesome
Great lullabies to the long sleepers.
DRUMNOTES 1
DAYS of the dead men, Danny.
Drum for the dead, drum on your remembering heart.
Jaur s, a great loveheart of France, a slug of lead in the red valves.
Kitchener of Khartoum, tall, cold, proud, a shark's mouthful.
Franz Josef, the old man of forty haunted kingdoms, in a tomb with the Hapsburg fathers, moths
eating a green uniform to
tatters, worms taking all and leaving only bones and gold buttons, bones and iron crosses.
Jack London, Jim Riley, Verhaeren, riders to the republic of dreams.
Days of the dead, Danny.
Drum on your remembering heart.
Copyright. Dodd, Mead Co.
MOONSET
LEAVES of poplars pick Japanese prints against the west.
Moon sand on the canal doubles the changing pictures.
The moon's goodby ends pictures.
The west is empty. All else is empty. No moontalk at all now.
Only dark listening to dark.
Cornhuskers
DRUMNOTES 1 54
Page No 59
GARDEN WIRELESS
How many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air?
What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles,
Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman's mouth of passion kisses, a nun's mouth of sweet thinking, here
topping a straight line
of green, a pillar stem?
Who hurled this bomb of red caresses?nodding balloonfilm shooting its wireless every fraction
of a second these June
days:
Love me before I die;
Love melove me now.
HANDFULS
BLOSSOMS of babies
Blinking their stories
Come soft
On the dusk and the babble;
Little red gamblers,
Handfuls that slept in the dust.
Summers of rain,
Winters of drift,
Tell off the years;
And they go back
Who came soft
Back to the sod,
To silence and dust;
Gray gamblers,
Handfuls again.
Cornhuskers
GARDEN WIRELESS 55
Page No 60
COOL TOMBS
WHEN Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin...
in the dust, in the cool
tombs.
And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes ... in
the dust, in the cool
tombs.
Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she
wonder? does she
remember? ... in the dust, in the cool tombs?
Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and
blowing tin horns ...
tell me if the lovers are losers ... tell me if any get more than the lovers ... in the dust .... in the cool
tombs.
SHENANDOAH
SHENANDOAH
IN the Shenandoah Valley, one rider gray and one rider blue, and the sun on the riders wondering.
Piled in the Shenandoah, riders blue and riders gray, piled with shovels, one and another, dust in the
Shenandoah taking them quicker than mothers take children done with play.
The blue nobody remembers, the gray nobody remembers, it's all old and old nowadays in the
Shenandoah.
And all is young, a butter of dandelions slung on the turf, climbing blue flowers of the wishing
woodlands wondering: a
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COOL TOMBS 56
Page No 61
midnight purple violet claims the sun among old heads, among old dreams of repeating heads of a
rider blue and a rider
gray in the Shenandoah.
NEW FEET
EMPTY battlefields keep their phantoms.
Grass crawls over old gun wheels
And a nodding Canada thistle flings a purple
Into the summer's southwest wind,
Wrapping a root in the rust of a bayonet,
Reaching a blossom in rust of shrapnel.
OLD OSAWATOMIE
JOHN BROWN'S body under the morning stars.
Six feet of dust under the morning stars.
And a panorama of war performs itself
Over the sixfoot stage of circling armies.
Room for Gettysburg, Wilderness, Chickamauga,
On a sixfoot stage of dust.
GRASS
PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Cornhuskers
NEW FEET 57
Page No 62
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
FLANDERS
FLANDERS, the name of a place, a country of people,
Spells itself with letters, is written in books.
"Where is Flanders?" was asked one time,
Flanders known only to those who lived there
And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language.
"Where is Flanders?" was asked.
And the slang adepts shot the reply: Search me.
A few thousand people milking cows, raising radishes,
On a land of salt grass and dunes, sandswept with a seabreath on it:
This was Flanders, the unknown, the quiet,
The place where cows hunted lush cuds of green on lowlands,
And the rawboned plowmen took horses with long shanks
Out in the dawn to the seabreath.
Flanders sat slowspoken amid slowswung windmills,
Slowcircling windmill arms turning north or west,
Turning to talk to the swaggering winds, the childish winds,
So Flanders sat with the heart of a kitchen girl
Washing wooden bowls in the winter sun by a window.
GARGOYLE
I SAW a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran over it. Its laugh was full of nails rattling. It
was a child's dream
of a mouth.
A fist hit the mouth: knuckles of gunmetal driven by an electric wrist and shoulder. It was a child's
Cornhuskers
FLANDERS 58
Page No 63
dream of an arm.
The fist hit the mouth over and over, again and again.
The mouth bled melted iron, and laughed its laughter of nails rattling.
And I saw the more the fist pounded the more the mouth laughed. The fist is pounding and pounding,
and the mouth
answering.
OLD TIMERS
I AM an ancient reluctant conscript.
On the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans.
On the march of Miltiades' phalanx I had a haft and head;
I had a bristling gleaming spearhandle.
Redheaded Cūsar picked me for a teamster.
He said, "Go to work, you Tuscan bastard,
Rome calls for a man who can drive horses."
The units of conquest led by Charles the Twelfth,
The whirling whimsical Napoleonic columns:
They saw me one of the horseshoers.
I trimmed the feet of a white horse Bonaparte swept the night stars with.
Lincoln said, "Get into the game; your nation takes you."
And I drove a wagon and team and I had my arm shot off
At Spottsylvania Court House.
I am an ancient reluctant conscript.
HOUSE
Two Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe.
Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two
daughters in Missouri and
Texas don't want him around.
The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer on the bottom of a flatiron while the January
wind howls and the
zero air weaves laces on the window glass.
Cornhuskers
OLD TIMERS 59
Page No 64
Joe tells the Swede boys all about Chickamauga and Chattanooga, how the Union soldiers crept in
rain some where a dark
night and ran forward and killed many Rebels, took flags, held a hill, and won a victory told about in
the histories in
school.
Joe takes a piece of carpenter's chalk, draws lines on the floor and piles stove wood to show where
six regiments were
slaughtered climbing a slope.
"Here they went" and "Here they went," says Joe, and the January wind howls and the zero air
weaves laces on the window
glass.
The two Swede boys go downstairs with a big blur of guns, men, and hills in their heads. They eat
herring and potatoes
and tell the family war is a wonder and soldiers are a wonder.
One breaks out with a cry at supper: I wish we had a war now and I could be a soldier.
JOHN ERICSSON DAY MEMORIAL, 1918
INTO the gulf and the pit of the dark night, the cold night, there is a man goes into the dark and the
cold and when he
comes back to his people he brings fire in his hands and they remember him in the years afterward as
the fire bringerthey
remember or forgetthe man whose head kept singing to the want of his home, the want of his
people.
For this man there is no name thought of he has broken from jungles and the old oxen and the old
wagonscircled the
earth with shipsbelted the earth with steelswung with wings and a drumming motor in the high
blue skyshot his words
on a wireless way through shattering sea storms :out from the night and out from the jungles his
head keeps
singingthere is no road for him but on and on.
Against the sea bastions and the land bastions, against the great air pockets of stars and atoms, he
points a finger, finds a
release clutch, touches a button no man knew before.
The soldier with a smoking gun and a gas maskthe workshop man under the smokestacks and the
blueprintsthese two
are brothers of the handshake never forgottenfor these two we give the salt tears of our eyes, the
salute of red roses, the
flamewon scarlet of poppies.
Cornhuskers
JOHN ERICSSON DAY MEMORIAL, 1918 60
Page No 65
For the soldier who gives all, for the workshop man who gives all, for these the red bar is on the
flagthe red bar is the
heart'sblood of the mother who gave him, the land that gave him.
The gray foam and the great wheels of war go by and take alland the years give mist and
ashesand our feet stand at
these, the memory places of the known and the unknown, and our hands give a flamewon
poppyour hands touch the
red bar of a flag for the sake of those who gaveand gave all.
REMEMBERED WOMEN
FOR a woman's face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night,
For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on
among the boots and
guns.
The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is a row of teeth that bite on the flanks of night, the
horizon sings of a new
kill and a big kill.
The horizon behind is a wall of dark etched with a memory, fixed with a woman's facethey fight
on and on, boots in the
mud and heads in the gray rainfor the women they hate and the women they lovefor the women
they left behind, they
fight on.
OUT OF WHITE LIPS
OUT of white lips a question: Shall seven million dead ask for their blood a little land for the living
wives and children, a
little land for the living brothers and sisters?
Out of white lips :Shall they have only air that sweeps round the earth for breath of their nostrils
and no footing on the
dirt of the earth for their battledrabbed, battlesoaked shoes?
Out of white lips:Is the red in the flag the blood of a free man on a piece of land his own or is it
the red of a sheep slit in
the throat for mutton?
Cornhuskers
REMEMBERED WOMEN 61
Page No 66
Out of white lips a white pain murmurs: Who shall have land? Him who has stood ankle deep in the
blood of his
comrades, in the red trenches dug in the land?
MEMOIR
PAPA JOFFRE, the shoulders of him wide as the land of France.
We look on the shoulders filling the stage of the Chicago Auditorium.
A fat mayor has spoken much English and the mud of his speech is crossed with quicksilver hisses
elusive and rapid from
floor and gallery.
A neat governor speaks English and the listeners ring chimes to his clear thoughts.
Joffre speaks a few words in French; this is a voice of the long firing line that runs from the salt sea
dunes of Flanders to
the white spear crags of the Swiss mountains.
This is the man on whose yes and no has hung the death of battalions and brigades; this man speaks
of the tricolor of his
country now melted in a great resolve with the starred bunting of Lincoln and Washington.
This is the hero of the Marne, massive, irreckonable; he lets tears roll down his cheek; they trickle a
wet salt off his chin
onto the blue coat.
There is a play of American hands and voices equal to seabreakers and a lift of white sun on a stony
beach.
A MILLION YOUNG WORKMEN, 1915
A MILLION young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads,
And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of bloodred
roses.
Cornhuskers
MEMOIR 62
Page No 67
Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands.
And oh, it would have been a great job of killing and a new and beautiful thing under the sun if the
million knew why
they hacked and tore each other to death.
The kings are grinning, the kaiser and the czarthey are alive riding in leatherseated motor cars,
and they have their
women and roses for ease, and they eat freshpoached eggs for breakfast, new butter on toast, sitting
in tall watertight
houses reading the news of war.
I dreamed a million ghosts of the young workmen rose in their shirts all soaked in crimson ... and
yelled:
God damn the grinning kings, God damn the kaiser and the czar.
Chicago,1915
SMOKE
I SIT in a chair and read the newspapers.
Millions of men go to war, acres of them are buried, guns and ships broken, cities burned, villages
sent up in smoke, and
children where cows are killed off amid hoarse barbecues vanish like fingerrings of smoke in a
north wind.
I sit in a chair and read the newspapers.
A TALL MAN
THE mouth of this man is a gaunt strong mouth.
The head of this man is a gaunt strong head.
The jaws of this man are bone of the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians.
The eyes of this man are chlorine of two sobbing oceans,
Foam, salt, green, wind, the changing unknown.
The neck of this man is pith of buffalo prairie, old longing and new beckoning of corn belt or cotton
belt,
Either a proud Sequoia trunk of the wilderness
Or huddling lumber of a sawmill waiting to be a roof.
Brother mystery to man and mob mystery,
Cornhuskers
SMOKE 63
Page No 68
Brother cryptic to lifted cryptic hands,
He is night and abyss, he is white sky of sun, he is the head of the people.
The heart of him the red drops of the people,
The wish of him the steady grayeagle craghunting flights of the people.
Humble dust of a wheelworn road,
Slashed sod under the ironshining plow,
These of service in him, these and many cities, many borders, many wrangles between Alaska and
the Isthmus, between
the Isthmus and the Horn, and east and west of Omaha, and east and west of Paris, Berlin, Petrograd.
The blood in his right wrist and the blood in his left wrist run with the right wrist wisdom of the
many and the left wrist
wisdom of the many.
It is the many he knows, the gaunt strong hunger of the many.
THE FOUR BROTHERS
Notes for War Songs (November, 1917)
MAKE. war songs out of these;
Make chants that repeat and weave.
Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;
Make slowbooming psalms up to the boom of the big guns.
Make a marching song of swinging arms and swinging legs,
Going along,
Going along,
On the roads from San Antonio to Athens, from Seattle to Bagdad
The boys and men in winding lines of khaki, the circling squares of bayonet points.
Cowpunchers, cornhuskers, shopmen, ready in khaki;
Ballplayers, lumberjacks, ironworkers, ready in khaki;
A million, ten million, singing, "I am ready."
This the sun looks on between two seaboards,
In the land of Lincoln, in the land of Grant and Lee.
I heard one say, "I am ready to be killed."
I heard another say, "I am ready to be killed."
O sunburned cleareyed boys!
I stand on sidewalks and you go by with drums and guns and bugles,
Cornhuskers
THE FOUR BROTHERS 64
Page No 69
Youand the flag!
And my heart tightens, a fist of something feels my throat
When you go by,
You on the kaiser hunt, you and your faces saying, "I am ready to be killed."
They are hunting death,
Death for the onearmed mastoid kaiser.
They are after a Hohenzollern head:
There is no manhunt of men remembered like this.
The four big brothers are out to kill.
France, Russia, Britain, America
The four republics are sworn brothers to kill the kaiser.
Yes, this is the great manhunt;
And the sun has never seen till now
Such a line of toothed and tusked mankillers,
In the blue of the upper sky,
In the green of the undersea,
In the red of winter dawns.
Eating to kill,
Sleeping to kill,
Asked by their mothers to kill,
Wished by fourfifths of the world to kill
To cut the kaiser's throat,
To hack the kaiser's head,
To hang the kaiser on a highhorizon gibbet.
And is it nothing else than this?
Three times ten million men thirsting the blood
Of a halfcracked onearmed child of the German kings?
Three times ten million men asking the blood
Of a child born with his head wrongshaped,
The blood of rotted kings in his veins?
If this were all, O God,
I would go to the far timbers
And look on the gray wolves
Tearing the throats of moose:
I would ask a wilder drunk of blood.
Look! It is four brothers in joined hands together.
The people of bleeding France,
The people of bleeding Russia,
The people of Britain, the people of America
These are the four brothers, these are the four republics.
At first I said it in anger as one who clenches his fist in wrath to fling his knuckles into the face of some one
taunting;
Cornhuskers
THE FOUR BROTHERS 65
Page No 70
Now I say it calmly as one who has thought it over and over again at night, among the mountains, by the
seacombers in
storm.
I say now, by God, only fighters today will save the world, nothing but fighters will keep alive the names of
those who
left red prints of bleeding feet at Valley Forge in Christmas snow.
On the cross Of Jesus, the sword of Napoleon, the skull of Shakespeare, the pen of Tom Jefferson, the ashes
of Abraham
Lincoln, or any sign of the red and running life poured out by the mothers of the world,
By the God of morning glories climbing blue the doors of quiet homes, by the God of tall hollyhocks
laughing glad to
children in peaceful valleys, by the God of new mothers wishing peace to sit at windows nursing babies,
I swear only reckless men, ready to throw away their lives by hunger, deprivation, desperate clinging to a
single purpose
imperturbable and undaunted, men with the primitive guts of rebellion,
Only fighters gaunt with the red brand of labor's sorrow on their brows and labor's terrible pride in their
blood, men with
souls asking dangeronly these will save and keep the four big brothers.
Goodnight is the word, goodnight to the kings, to the czars,
Goodnight to the kaiser.
The breakdown and the fadeaway begins.
The shadow of a great broom, ready to sweep out the trash, is here.
One finger is raised that counts the czar,
The ghost who beckoned men who come no more
The czar gone to the winds on God's great dustpan,
The czar a pinch of nothing,
The last of the gibbering Romanoffs.
Out and goodnight
The ghosts of the summer palaces
And the ghosts of the winter palaces!
Out and out, goodnight to the kings, the czars, the kaisers.
Another finger will speak,
And the kaiser, the ghost who gestures a hundred million sleepingwaking ghosts,
The kaiser will go onto God's great dustpan
The last of the gibbering Hohenzollerns.
Look! God pities this trash, God waits with a broom and a dustpan,
God knows a finger will speak and count them out.
It is written in the stars;
It is spoken on the walls;
It clicks in the firewhite zigzag of the Atlantic wireless;
Cornhuskers
THE FOUR BROTHERS 66
Page No 71
It mutters in the bastions of thousandmile continents;
It sings in a whistle on the midnight winds from Walla Walla to Mesopotamia:
Out and goodnight.
The millions slow in khaki,
The millions learning Turkey in the Straw and John Brown's Body,
The millions remembering windrows of dead at Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and Spottsylvania Court House,
The millions dreaming of the morning star of Appomattox,
The millions easy and calm with guns and steel, planes and prows:
There is a hammering, drumming hell to come.
The killing gangs are on the way.
God takes one year for a job.
God takes ten years or a million.
God knows when a doom is written.
God knows this job will be done and the words spoken:
Out and goodnight.
The red tubes will run,
And the great price be paid,
And the homes empty,
And the wives wishing,
And the mothers wishing.
There is only one way now, only the way of the red tubes and the great price.
Well...
MAYBE the morning sun is a fivecent yellow balloon,
And the evening stars the joke of a God gone crazy.
Maybe the mothers of the world,
And the life that pours from their torsal folds
Maybe it's all a lie sworn by liars,
And a God with a cackling laughter says:
"I, the Almighty God,
I have made all this,
I have made it for kaisers, czars, and kings."
Three times ten million men say: No.
Three times ten million men say:
God is a God of the People.
And the God who made the world
And fixed the morning sun,
And flung the evening stars,
And shaped the baby hands of life,
This is the God of the Four Brothers;
This is the God of bleeding France and bleeding Russia;
This is the God of the people of Britain and America.
The graves from the Irish Sea to the Caucasus peaks are ten times a million.
The stubs and stumps of arms and legs, the eyesockets empty, the cripples, ten times a million.
Cornhuskers
THE FOUR BROTHERS 67
Page No 72
The crimson thumbprint of this anathema is on the door panels of a hundred million homes.
Cows gone, mothers on sickbeds, children cry a hunger and no milk comes in the noontime or at night.
The deathyells of it all, the torn throats of men in ditches calling for water, the shadows and the hacking
lungs in dugouts,
the steel paws that clutch and squeeze a scarlet drain day by daythe storm of it is hell.
But look! child! the storm is blowing for a clean air.
Look! the four brothers march
And hurl their big shoulders
And swear the job shall be done.
Out of the wild fingerwriting north and south, east and west, over the bloodcrossed, blooddusty ball of
earth,
Out of it all a God who knows is sweeping clean,
Out of it all a God who sees and pierces through, is breaking and cleaning out an old thousand years, is
making ready for a
new thousand years.
The four brothers shall be five and more.
Under the chimneys of the winter time the children of the world shall sing new songs.
Among the rocking restless cradles the mothers of the world shall sing new sleepytime songs.
Cornhuskers
THE FOUR BROTHERS 68
Bookmarks
1. Table of Contents, page = 3
2. Cornhuskers, page = 6
3. Carl Sandburg, page = 6
4. CORNHUSKERS, page = 8
5. PRAIRIE, page = 8
6. RIVER ROADS, page = 14
7. PRAIRIE WATERS BY NIGHT, page = 14
8. EARLY MOON, page = 15
9. LAUGHING CORN, page = 15
10. AUTUMN MOVEMENT, page = 16
11. FALLTIME, page = 16
12. ILLINOIS FARMER, page = 16
13. HITS AND RUNS, page = 17
14. VILLAGE IN LATE SUMMER, page = 17
15. BLIZZARD NOTES, page = 17
16. SUNSET FROM OMAHA HOTEL WINDOW, page = 18
17. STILL LIFE, page = 18
18. BAND CONCERT, page = 19
19. THREE PIECES ON THE SMOKE OF AUTUMN, page = 19
20. LOCALITIES, page = 20
21. CABOOSE THOUGHTS, page = 21
22. ALIX, page = 23
23. POTATO BLOSSOM SONGS AND JIGS, page = 23
24. LOAM, page = 26
25. MANITOBA CHILDE ROLAND, page = 26
26. WILDERNESS, page = 27
27. PERSONS HALF KNOWN, page = 28
28. CHICAGO POET, page = 29
29. FIRE-LOGS, page = 29
30. REPETITIONS, page = 29
31. ADELAIDE CRAPSEY, page = 30
32. YOUNG BULLFROGS, page = 30
33. MEMOIR OF A PROUD BOY, page = 31
34. BILBEA, page = 32
35. SOUTHERN PACIFIC, page = 32
36. WASHERWOMAN, page = 33
37. PORTRAIT OF A MOTOR CAR, page = 33
38. GIRL IN A CAGE, page = 33
39. BUFFALO BILL, page = 34
40. SIXTEEN MONTHS, page = 34
41. CHILD MARGARET, page = 35
42. SINGING NIGGER, page = 35
43. LEATHER LEGGINGS, page = 36
44. LEATHER LEGGINGS, page = 36
45. PRAYERS OF STEEL, page = 37
46. ALWAYS THE MOB, page = 37
47. JABBERERS, page = 38
48. CARTOON, page = 39
49. INTERIOR, page = 39
50. STREET WINDOW, page = 40
51. PALLADIUMS, page = 41
52. CLOCKS, page = 41
53. LEGENDS, page = 42
54. CLOWNS DYING, page = 42
55. PSALM OF THOSE WHO GO FORTH BEFORE DAYLIGHT, page = 43
56. HORSES AND MEN IN RAIN, page = 43
57. QUESTIONNAIRE, page = 44
58. NEAR KEOKUK, page = 44
59. SLANTS AT BUFFALO, NEW YORK, page = 45
60. FLAT LANDS, page = 45
61. LAWYER, page = 46
62. THREE BALLS, page = 46
63. CHICKS, page = 46
64. HUMDRUM, page = 47
65. JOLIET, page = 47
66. KNUCKS, page = 48
67. TESTAMENT, page = 49
68. HAUNTS, page = 49
69. VALLEY SONG, page = 49
70. IN TALL GRASS, page = 50
71. UPSTAIRS, page = 50
72. MONOSYLLABIC, page = 51
73. FILMS, page = 51
74. KREISLER, page = 51
75. THE SEA HOLD, page = 52
76. GOLDWING MOTH, page = 52
77. LOIN CLOTH, page = 52
78. HEMLOCK AND CEDAR, page = 53
79. SUMMER SHIRT SALE, page = 53
80. MEDALLION, page = 53
81. BRICKLAYER LOVE, page = 54
82. ASHURNATSIRPAL III, page = 54
83. MAMMY HUMS, page = 55
84. BRINGERS, page = 55
85. CRIMSON RAMBLER, page = 56
86. HAUNTS, page = 56
87. HAVE ME, page = 57
88. FIRE DREAMS, page = 57
89. BABY FACE, page = 58
90. THE YEAR, page = 58
91. DRUMNOTES 1 , page = 59
92. MOONSET, page = 59
93. GARDEN WIRELESS, page = 60
94. HANDFULS, page = 60
95. COOL TOMBS, page = 61
96. SHENANDOAH, page = 61
97. SHENANDOAH, page = 61
98. NEW FEET, page = 62
99. OLD OSAWATOMIE, page = 62
100. GRASS, page = 62
101. FLANDERS, page = 63
102. GARGOYLE, page = 63
103. OLD TIMERS, page = 64
104. HOUSE, page = 64
105. JOHN ERICSSON DAY MEMORIAL, 1918, page = 65
106. REMEMBERED WOMEN, page = 66
107. OUT OF WHITE LIPS, page = 66
108. MEMOIR, page = 67
109. A MILLION YOUNG WORKMEN, 1915, page = 67
110. SMOKE, page = 68
111. A TALL MAN, page = 68
112. THE FOUR BROTHERS, page = 69