^637 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ."> 'BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY, WILLIAMS SAGE' Digitized by Microsoft® Cornell University Library PS 3537.A548C5 Chicago poems 3 1924 021 682 731 All books are subject to recall after two weeks Olin/Kroch Library DATE DUE -..".p jyit4..aj -- -Hf^ ii.«a-.jnnn ^'ir \i \ T^^'WvJvJ luU^ijMP #**'" " i^igglggli-i gp^ iw GAVLORD igitized by Mic •■osoft® PRINTED IN U.S.A This book was digitized by Microsoft Corporation in cooperation with Corneii University Libraries, 2007. You may use and print this copy in iimited quantity for your personai purposes, but may not distribute or provide access to it (or modified or partiai versions of it) for revenue-generating or other commerciai purposes. Digitized by Microsoft® CHICAGO POEMS By CARL SANDBURG NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1916 Digitized by Microsoft® COPVKIOHT, «9t6 By HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY Published April, 191$ THE QUINK A BODEN 00. PRESB HAHWAYf N, i. Digitized by Microsoft® Wo MY WIFE AND PAL LILLIAN STEICHEN SANDBURG Digitized by Microsoft® Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archi\^.£r^/^d^aNs^u31 924021 682731 PREFATORY NOTE Some of these writings were first printed in Poetry. A Magazine of Verse, Chicago. Permission to reprint is by courtesy of that publication. The writer wishes to thank Harriet Monroe and Alice Corbin Henderson, editors of Poetry, and William Marion Reedy, editor of Reedy's Mirror, St. Louis, whose services have height- ened what values of human address herein hold good. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® CONTENTS CHICAGO POEMS „,., Chicago 3 Sketch 5 Masses 6 Lost 7«- The Harbor 8 They Will Say 9 Mill-Doors lo • Halsted Street Car ii Clark Street Bridge 12 Passers-by •. . . 13 The Walking Man of Rodin 14 Subway 15 The Shovel Man 16 A Teamster's Farewell 17. Fish Crier 18'- Picnic Boat 19 Happiness 20 Muckers 21^ — Blacklisted 22 Graceland 23 ■N-' Child of the Romans 24 The Right to Grief 25 Mag 27 Onion Days 28 Population Drifts 30 Cripple 31 A Fence 32 -Anna Imroth 33 •* ' Vorking Girls 34 vii Digitized by Microsoft® viii Contents *■- Mamie 35 ' — Personality 36 Cumulatives 37 To Certain Journeymen 38 Chamfort 30 Limited 40 — The Has-Been 41 In a Back Alley 42 A Coin 43 Dynamiter 44 , ,^„ice Handler 45 ' Jack . • 45 ...^' Fellow Citizens 47 Nigger ^p Two Neighbors 50 Style 5i_ Under a Hat Rim *<^ To Beachey — 1912 Under a Hj In a Breath 52 53 „*^ Bath -, Bronzes j5 Dunes -g On the Way ! . ! ! 59 Ready to Kill ! . ! . 60 To a Contemporary Bunkshooter 61 ■ . Skyscraper g, HANDFULS ' 'F°g 71 P°oI 72 Jan Kubelik _- Choose y. Crimson ^, Whitelight '.'.''' -76 Flux ; : ; ; ^j, K'n 78 Digitized by Microsoft® Contents ix White Shoulders 79 Losses So Troths 8i WAR POEMS (1914-1915) Killers 85 Among the Red Guns 87 Iron 88 Murmurings in a Field Hospital 89 Statistics 90 Fight 91 Buttons 92 And They Obey 93 Jaws 94 Salvage 95 Wars 96 THE ROAD AND THE END The Road and the End 99 Choices 100 Graves loi Aztec Mask 102 Momus 103 The Answer 105 To a Dead Man 107 Under 108 A Sphinx 109 Who Am I? no Our Prayer of Thanks in FOGS AND FIRES At a Window nS Under the Harvest Moon 116 The Great Hunt "7 Monotone 118 Joy 119 Digitized by Microsoft® X Contents ■ Shirt 120 . . Aztec 121 Two 122 Back Yard 123 On the Breakwater 124 Mask 125 Pearl Fog 126 I Sang 127 - Follies 128 June 129 Nocturne in a Deserted Brickyard 130 "^Hydrangeas 131 •"**^heine in Yellow 132 Between Two Hills I33 Last Answers i34 --'. Window 135 " Young Sea 136 Bones 138 Pals 139 Child 140 Poppies 141 "'Child Moon 142 Margaret 143 SHADOWS Poems Done on a Late Night Car 147 It Is Much ISO , - Trafficker iSi '~* Harrison Street Court 152 - ^Soiled Dove iS3 » -* Jungheimer's '. . . . 154 - — Gone iSS OTHER DAYS (1900-19 10) Dreams in the Dusk 159 Docks 160 Digitized by Microsoft® Contents xi All Day Long i6i Waiting 163 From the Shore 163 Uplands in May 164 A Dream Girl 165 The Plowboy 166 Broadway 167 Old Woman 168 The Noon Hour 169 'Boes 170 Under a Telephone Pole 171 -,— ^ • ' I Am the People, the Mob 172 "^ Government 173 Languages I7S Letters to Dead Imagists 176 Sheep 177 The Red Son 178 The Mist 180 .S!i»3rhe Junk Man 181 Silver Nails 182 Gypsy 183 Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® CHICAGO Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler ; Stormy, husky, brawling. City of the Big Shoulders : They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. And they tell me you are crooked and I answer : Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is : On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger. And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them : Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive, and coarse and strong and cun- ning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities; 3 Digitized by Microsoft® 4 Chicago Poems {Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness, Bareheaded, Shoveling, Wrecking, Planning, Building, broking, rebuilding, Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth. Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs, Laughing even as ^an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle. Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people, Laughing ! Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to bfe Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with_ Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation. Digitized by Microsoft® SKETCH The shadows of the ships • Rock on the crest In the low blue lustre Of the tardy and the soft inroUing tide. A long brown bar at the dip of the sky Puts an arm of sand in- the span of salt. The lucid and endless wrinkles Draw in, lapse and withdraw. Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles Wash on the floor of the beach. Rocking on the crest In the low blue lustre Are the shadows of the ships. Digitized by Microsoft® MASSES Among the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and red crag and was amazed; On the beach where the long push under the endless tide maneuvers, I stood silent; ■Under the stars on the prairie watching the Dipper slant over the horizon's grass, I was full of thoughts. Great men, pageants of war and labor, soldiers and work- ers, mothers lifting their children — these all I touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them. And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, millions of the Poor, patient and toiling; more patient than crags, tides, and stars; innumerable, patient as the darkness of night-^and all broken, humble ruins of nations. Digitized by Microsoft® LOST Desolate and lone All night long on the lake Where fog trails and mist creeps, The whistle of a boat Calls and cries unendingly, Like some lost child In tears and trouble Hunting the harbor's breast And the harbor's eyes. Digitized by Microsoft® THE HARBOR Passing through huddled and ugly walls By doorways where women Looked from their hunger-deep eyes, Haunted with shadows of hunger-hand^, Out from the huddled and ugly walls, I came sudden, at the city's edge, , On a blue burst of lake. Long lake waves breaking under the sun On a spray-flung curve of shore ; And a fluttering storm of gulls, Masses of great gray wings And flying white bellies Peering and wheeling free in the open. Digitized by Microsoft® THEY WILL SAY Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this : '^ou took little children away from the sun and the dew, And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky, -.^ And the reckless rain ; you put them between walls i To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages. To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights. \ Digitized by Microsoft® ' MILL-DOORS You never come back. I say good-by when I see you going in the doors, The hopeless open doors that call and wait And take you then for — ^how many cents a day? How many cents for the sleepy eyes and fingers? I say goodvby because I know they tap your wrists, In the dark, in the silence, day by day, And all the blood of you drop by drop. And you are old before you are young. You never come back. le Digitized by Microsoft® HALSTED STREET CAR Come you, cartoonists, Hang on a strap with me here At seven o'clock in the morning On a Halsted street car. Take your pencils And draw these faces. Try with your pencils for these crooked faces, That pig-sticker in one corner — his mouth — That overall factory girl — ^her loose cheeks. Find for your pencils A way to mark your memory Of tired empty faces. After their night's sleep, In the moist dawn And cool daybreak, '""^ Faces Tired of wishes, Empty of dreams. -^ ' Digitized by Microsoft® CLARK STREET BRIDGE Dust of the feet And dust of the wheels. Wagons and people going, All day feet and wheels. Now. . . . . Only stars and mist A lonely policeman, Two cabaret dancers. Stars and mist again. No more feet or wheels. No more dust and wagons. Voices of dollars And drops of blood Voices of broken hearts, . ' .'' Voices singing, singing, . . Silver voices, singing. Softer than the stars, Softer than the mist. 12 Digitized by Microsoft® PASSERS-BY Passers-by, Out of your many faces t Flash memories to me Now at the day end Away from the sidewalks Where your shoe soles traveled And your voices rose and blent To form the city's afternoon roar Hindering an old silence. Passers-by, I remember lean ones among you, Throats in the clutch of a hope, Lips written over with strivings. Mouths that kiss only for love, Records of great wishes slept with, ' Held long And prayed and toiled for : » . • ^es, Written on Your mouths And your throats I read them When you passed by. 13 Digitized by Microsoft® THE WALKING MAN OF RODIN Legs hold a torso away from the earth. And a regular high poem of legs is here. Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and eari hear And arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and rui ' motors. You make us \ Proud of our legs, old man. And you left off the head here, The skull found always crumbling neighbor of th( ankles. 14 Digitized by Microsoft® SUBWAY Down between the walls of shadow Where the iron laws insist, The hunger voices mock. The worn wayfaring men With the hunched and humble shoulders. Throw their laughter into toil. 15 Digitized by Microsoft® THE SHOVEL MAN On the street Slung on his shoulder is a handle half way across, Tied in a big knot on the scoop of cast iron Are the overalls faded from sun and rain in the ditches Spatter of dry clay sticking yellow on his left sleeve ... And a flimsy shirt open at the throat, I know him for a shovel man, • A c£go working for a dollar six-bits a day And a dark-eyed woman in the old country dreams o him for one of the world's ready men with a pai of fresh lips and a kiss better than all the wil grapes that ever grew in Tuscany. I6 Digitized by Microsoft® A TEAMSTER'S FAREWELL Sobs En Route to a Penitentiary GooD-BY now to the streets and the clash of wheels and locking hubs, The sun coming on the brass buckles and harness knobs, The muscles of the horses sliding under their heavy haunches, Good-by now to the traffic policeman and his whistle, The smash of the iron hoof on the stones, All the crazy wonderful slamming roar of the street — O- God, there's noises I'm going to be hungry for. 17 Digitized by Microsoft® . , ' FISH CRIER '' I KNOW a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with ■' vpice like a north wind blowing over corn stubb in .January. >^ ^ He dangles herring before prospectivfe customets-fivin "X ing a joy identical with that of Pavlowa dancing. His face is that of a man terribly gl^d to be selling fis terribly glad that God made fish, and customei's i whom he may call his wares from a pushcart. j •»i"' 18 Digitized by Microsoft® PICNIC BOAT Sunday night and the park policemen tell each other it is dark as a stack of black cats on Lake Michi gan. A big picmclioatcomesTiomeTo Chicago from the peach farms of Saugatuck. "■■^'■- Hundreds of electric bulbs break the night's darkness, a ^ a flock of red and yellow birds with wings at a stand-*" » still ._/ Running along the deck railings are festoons and leap- ing in curves are loops of light from prow and stern to the tall smokestacks. Over the hoarse crunch of waves at my pier comes a hoarse answer in the rhythmic oompa of the brasses playing a Polish folk-song for the home-comers.^ - i-« 19 Digitized by Microsoft® HAPPINESS - I ASKED professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness. And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men. They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them. And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river And I saw a, crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion. ' " ■ i/ 20 Digitized by Microsoft® MUCKERS Twenty men stand watching the muckers. Stabbing the sides of the ditch Where clay gleams yellow, Driving the blades of their shovels Deeper and deeper for the new gas mains, Wiping sweat off their faces With red bandanas. The muckers work on . . pausing . . to pull - Their boots out of suckholes where they slosh. Of the twenty looking on Ten murmur, "O, it's a hell of a job," Ten others, "Jesus, I wish I had the job." Digitized by Microsoft® BLACKLISTED Why shall I keep the old name? What is a name anywhere anyway? A name is a cheap thing all fathers and mothers leave each child: A job is a job and I want to live, so Why does God Almighty or anybody else care whether I take a new name to go by ? S2 Digitized by Microsoft® GRACELAND •Tomb of a millionaire, A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen, Place of the dead where they spend every year The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars For upkeep and flowers \ To keep fresh the memory ofthe dead. The merchant prince gone to dust Commanded in his written will ( - Over the signed name of his last testament Twenty-five thousand dollars be set aside For roses, lilacs, hydrangeas, tulips. For perfume and color, sweetness of remembrance • Around his last long home. (A hundred cash girls want nickels to go to the movies to-night.'\ In the back stalls of a hundred saloons, women are at tables Drinking with men or waiting for men jingling loose silver dollars in their pockets. In a hundred furnished rooms is a girl who sells silk or dress goods or leather stuff for six dollars a week wages And when she pulls on her stockings in the morning she is reckless about God and the newspapers and the police, the talk of her home town or the name people call her.) 23 Digitized by Microsoft® CHILD OF THE ROMANS The dago shovelman sits by the railroad track Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna. A train whirls by, and men and women at tables Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils, Eat steaks running with brown gravy, Strawberries and cream, eclaires and coffee. The dago shovelman finishes the dry bread and bologna. Washes it down with a dipper from the water-boy, And goes back to the second half of a ten-hour day's work Keeping the road-bed so the roses and jonquils Shake hardly at all in the cut glass vases Standing slender on the tables in the dining cars. 24 Digitized by Microsoft® THE RIGHT TO GRIEF To Certain Poets About to Die Take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow. Over the dead child of a millionaire, And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank Which the millionaire might order his secretary t scratch off And get cashed. Very well. You for your grief and I for mine. Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to. / 'J shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky. \His johlis sweeping blood off the floor! He gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works And it's many tubs of blood he shoves out with a broor day by day. I \^ow his three year old daughter I Is in a white coffin that cost him a week's wages. i____Every Saturday night he will pay the undertaker fift cents till the debt is wiped out. ,, The hunky and his wife and the kids Cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the whit box. 95 Digitized by Microsoft® z6 Chicago Poems They remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor bills. They are glad it is gone for the rest of the family now will have more to eat and wear. Yet before the majesty of Death they cry around the coffin And wipe their eyes with red bandanas and sob when the priest says, " God have mercy on us all." I have a right to feel my throat choke about this. You take your grief and I mine — see ? To-morrow there is no funeral and the hunky goes back to his job sweeping blood off the floor at a dollar seventy cents a day. All he does all day long is keep on shoving hog blood ahead of him with a broom. Digitized by Microsoft® MAG I WISH to God I never saw you, Mag. I wish you never quit your job and came along with me. I wish we never bought a license and a white dress For you to get married in the day we ran off to a min- ister And told him we would love each other and take care of each other Always and always long as the sun and the rain lasts any- where. Yes, I'm wishing now you lived somewhere away from here And I was a bum on the bumpers a thousand miles away tad broke. I wish the kids had never come And rent and coal and clothes to pay for And a grocery man calling for cash. Every day cash for beans and prunes. I wish to God I never saw you, Mag. I wish to God the kids had never come. \ 27 Digitized by Microsoft® ONION DAYS Mrs. Gabrielle Giovannitti comes along Peoria Street every morning at nine o'clock With kindling wood piled on top of her head, her eyes looking straight ahead to find the way for her old feet. Her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti, whose husband was killed in a tunnel explosion through the negligence of a fellow-servant. Works ten hours a day, sometimes twelve, picking onions for Jasper on the Bowmanville road. She takes a street car at half-past five in the morning, Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti does. And gets back from Jasper's with cash for her day's work, between nine and ten o'clock at night. Last week she got eight cents a box, Mrs. Pietro Gio- vannitti, picking onions for Jasper, But this week Jasper dropped the pay to six cents a box because so many women and girls were answer- ing the ads in the Daily News. Jasper belongs to an Episcopal church in Ravenswood and on certain Sundays He enjoys chanting the Nicene creed with his daughters on each side of him joining their voices with his. If the preacher repeats old sermons of a Sunday, Jas- per's mind wanders to his 700-acre farm and how he can make it produce more efiSciently 28 Digitized by Microsoft® And sometimes he speculates on whether he could word an ad in the Daily News so it would bring more women and girls out to his farm and reduce operat- ing costs. Mrs. Pietro Giovannitti is far from desperate about life ; her joy is in a child she knows will arrive to her in three months. And now while these are the pictures for today there are other pictures of the Giovannitti people I could give you for to-morrow, And how some of them go to the county agent on win- ter mornings with their baskets for beans and corn- meal and molasses. I listen to fellows saying here's good stuff for a novel or it might be worked up into a good play. I say there's no dramatist living can put old Mrs. Gabrielle Giovannitti into a play with that kindling wood piled on top of her head coming along Peoria Street nine o'clock in the morning. Digitized by Microsoft® POPULATION DRIFTS New-mown hay smell and wind of the plain made her a woman whose ribs had the ^wer of the hills in them and h«^^nds~were tough for work and there was passion for life in her womb. She and her man crossed the ocean and the years that marked their faces saw them haggling with landlords and grocers while six children played on the stones , andjprowled in the garbage cans. One child coughed* its lungs' away, two more have ade- nBfds"arid'can~neither~talk nor run like their mother, one is in jail, two have jobs in a box factory And as they fold the pasteboard, they wonder : what the wishing is and the wistful glory in them That flut- ters fairitly when the glimmer of spring comes on the air or the green of summer turns brown : They do not know it is the new-mown hay smell calling and the wind of the plain praying for them to come back and take hold of life again with tough hands and with passion. 30 Digitized by Microsoft® CRIPPLE Once when I saw a cripple Gasping slowly his last days with the white plague Looking from hollow eyes, calling for air. Desperately gesturing with wasted hands In the dark and dust of a house down in a slum, I said to myself I would rather have been a tall sunflower Living in a country garden Lifting a golden-brown face to the summer. Rain-washed and dew-misted. Mixed with the poppies and ranking hollyhocks, And wonderingly watching night after night The clear silent processionals of stars. 31 Digitized by Microsoft® A FENCE Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and th workmen are beginning the fence. The palings are made of iron bars with steel points thi can stab the life out of any man who falls on then As a fenccj it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the ral ble and all vagabonds and hungry men and all war dering children looking for a place to play. Passing through the bars and over the steel points will g , nothing except Death and the Rain and To-morrov 32 Digitized by Microsoft® ANNA IMROTH Cross the hands over the breast here — so. Straighten the legs a Httle more — so. And call for the wagon to come and take her home. Her mother will cry some and so will her sisters and brothers. But all of the others got down and they are safe and this is the only one of the factory girls who wasn't lucky in making the jump when the fire broke. It is the hand of God and the lack of fire escapes. 39 Digitized by Microsoft® WORKING GIRLS The working girls in the morning are going to wor long lines of them afoot amid the dowjntown stc and factories, thousands with little brick-sha; lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms. Each morning as I move through this river of you woman life I feel a wonder about where it is going, so many with a peach bloom of young ye on them and laughter of red lips and memories their eyes of dances the night before and plays ; walks. Green and gray streams run side by side in a river ; so here are always the others, those who have b over the way, the women who know each one end of life's gamble for her, the meaning and clew, the how and the why of the dances and arms that passed around their waists and the fin| that played in their hair. Faces go by written over : " I know it all, I know wt the bloom and the laughter go and I have mei ries," and the feet of these move slower and t have wisdom where the others have beauty. So the green and the gray move in the early morr on the downtown streets. Digitized by Microsoft® MAMIE •Mamie beat her head against the bars of a little Indiana town and dreamed of romance and big things off somewhere the way the railroad trains all ran. She could see the smoke of the engines get lost down I where the streaks of steel flashed in the sun and > when the newspapers came in on the morning mail she knew there was a big Chicago far off, where all the trains ran. ■ % She got tired of the barber shop boys and the post office chatter and the church gossip and the old pieces the band played on the Fourth of July and Decoration Day And sobbed at her fate and beat her head against the I bars and was going to kill herself ^hen the thought came to her that if she was going to die she might as well die struggling for a clutch of j romance among the streets of Chicago. t She has a job now at six dollars a week in the basement !■■ \ of the Boston Store *|t And even now she beats her head against the bars in the same old way and wonders if there is a bigger place r~- the railroads run to from Chicago where maybe there is j romance and big things and real dreams that never go smash, j 35 Digitized by Microsoft® PERSONALITY Musings of a Police Reporter in the Identification Bureau You have loved forty women, but you have only one thumb. You have led a hundred secret lives, but you mark only one thumb. You go round the world and fight in a thousand wars and win all the world's honors, but when you come back home the print of the one thumb your mother gave you is the same print of thumb you had in the old home when your mother kissed you and said good-by. Out of the whirling womb of time come millions of men and their feet crowd the earth and they cut one an- others' throats for room to stand and among theni all are not two thumbs alike. Somewhere is a Great God of Thumbs who can tell the inside story of this. 36 Digitized by Microsoft® CUMULATIVES Storms have beaten on this point of land And ships gone to wreck here and the passers-by remember it with talk on the deck at night as they near it. Fists have beaten on the face of this old prize-fighter And his battles have held the sporting pages and on the street they indicate him with their right fore-finger as one who once wore a championship belt. A hundred stories have been published and a thousand rumored About why this tall dark man has divorced two beau- tiful young women And married a third who resembles the first two and they shake their heads and say, " There he goes," when he passes by in sunny weather or in rain along the city streets. 37 Digitized by Microsoft® TO CERTAIN JOURNEYMEN Undertakers, hearse drivers, grave diggers, I speak to you as one not afraid of your business. You handle dust going to a long country, You know the secret behind your job is the same whethei you lower the coffin with modem, automatic ma chinery, well-oiled and noiseless, or whether th( body is laid in by naked hands and then coverec -T)y the shovels. Your day's work is done with laughter many days of th( year. And you earn a living by those who say good-by toda] in thin whispers. 38 Digitized by Microsoft® CHAMFORT There's Chamfort, He's a sample. Locked himself in his library with a gun, Shot off his nose and shot out his right eye. And this Chamfort knew how to write And thousands read his books on how to live. But he himself didn't know How to die by force of his own hand — see ? They found him a red pool on the carpet Cool as an April forenoon, Talking and talking gay maxims and grim epi- grams. Well, he wore bandages over his nose and right eye, Drank coffee and chatted many years With men and women who loved him Because he laughed and daily dared Death : " Come and take me." 39 Digitized by Microsoft® LIMITED I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation. Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand peo- •ple. (All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall pass to ashes.) I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he answers : " Omaha." 40 Digitized by Microsoft® THE HAS-BEEN A STONE face higher than six horses stood five thousand years gazing at the world seeming to clutch a secret. A boy passes and throws a niggerhead that chips off the end of the nose from the stone face; he lets fly a mud ball that spatters the right eye and cheek of the old looker-on. The boy laughs and goes whistling "ee-ee-ee ee-ee-ee." The stone face stands silent, seeming to clutch a secret. 41 Digitized by Microsoft® IN A BACK ALLEY Remembrance for a great man is this. The newsies are pitching pennies. •And on the copper disk is the man's face. Dead lover of boys, what do you ask for now ? 43 Digitized by Microsoft® A COIN Your western heads here cast on money. You are the two that fade away together, Partners in the mist. Lunging buffalo shoulder, Lean Indian face, We who come after where you are gone Salute your forms on the new nickel. You are To us: The past. Runners On the prairie: Good-by. 43 Digitized by Microsoft® DYNAMITER I SAT with a dynamiter at supper in a German saloo eating steak and onions. And he laughed and told stories of his wife and childre and the cause of labor and the working class. It was laughter of an unshakable man knowing life to b a rich and red-blooded thing. Yes, his laugh rang like the call of gray birds filled wit a glory of joy ramming their winged flight throug , a rain storm. His name was in many newspapers as an enemy of th nation and few keepers of churches or schools woul open their doors to him. *^ Over the steak and onions not a word was said of hi deep days and nights as a dynamiter. Only I always remember him as a lover of life, a love of children, a lover of all free, reckless laughte K everywhere — lover of red hearts and red blood th world over. 44 Digitized by Microsoft® ICE HANDLER T KNOW an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with pearl buttons the size of a dollar, And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice- box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread, Tells the bartender it's hotter than yesterday and will be hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus, And is on his way with his head in the air and a hard pair of fists. He spends a dollar or so every Saturday night on a two hundred pound woman who washes dishes in the Hotel Morrison. He remembers when the union was organized he broke the noses of two scabs and loosened the nuts so the wheels came oflf six different wagons one morning, and he came around and watched the ice melt in the street. All he was sorry for was one of the scabs bit him on the knuckles of the right hand so they bled when he came around to the saloon to tell the boys about it. 4S Digitized by Microsoft® JACK Jack was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a da and his- hands were tougher than sole leather. He married a tough woman and they had eight childn and the woman died and the children grew up at X . went away and wrote the old man every two yeai (THc died in the poorhouse sitting on a bench in the si telling reminiscences to other old men whose wom( were dead and children scattered. 'y_ There was joy on his face when he died as there was j( on his face when he lived4-he was a swarthy, swai gering son-of-a-gun. 46 Digitized by Microsoft® FELLOW CITIZENS I DRANK musty ale at the Illinois Athletic Club with the millionaire manufacturer of Green River butter one night And his face had the shining light of an old-time Quaker, he spoke of a beautiful daughter, and I knew he had a peace and a happiness up his sleeve somewhere. Then I heard Jim Kirch make a speech to the Advertis- ing Association on the trade resources of South America. And the way he lighted a three-for-a-nickel stogie and cocked it at an angle regardless of the manners of our best people, I knew he had a clutch on a real happiness even though some of the reporters on his newspaper say he is the living double of Jack London's Sea Wolf. In the mayor's office the mayor himself told me he was happy though it is a hard job to satisfy all the office- seekers and eat all the dinners he is asked to eat. Down in Gilpin Place, near Hull House, was a man with his jaw wrapped for a bad toothache. And he had it all over the butter millionaire, Jim Kirch and the mayor when it came to happiness. He is a maker of accordions and guitars and not only makes them from start to finish, but plays them- after he makes them. 47 Digitized by Microsoft® 48 Chicago Poems And he had a guitar of mahogany with a walnut botb he offered for seven dollars and a half if I wanted And another just like it, only smaller, for six dolla though he never mentioned the price till I asl him. And he stated the price in a sorry way, as though 1 music and the make of an instrument count foi million times more than the price in money. I thought he had a real soul and knew a lot about Gi There was light in his eyes of one who has conquei sorrow in so far as sorrow is conquerable or wo conquering. Anyway he is the only Chicago citizen I was jealous that day. He played a dance they play in some parts of Itj when the harvest of grapes is over and the wi presses are ready for work. Digitized by Microsoft® NIGGER - Ql AM the niggerN Singer of songgf Dancer. . . Softer than fluff of cotton. . . Harder than dark earth Roads beaten in the sun By the bare feet of slaves. . . Foam of teeth . . . breaking crash of laughter. . . Red love of the blood of woman, White love of the tumbling pickaninnies. . . Lazy love of the banjo thrum. . . Sweated and driven for the harvest-wage. Loud laugher with hands like hams, Fists toughened on the handles. Smiling the slumber dreams of old jungles. Crazy as the sun and dew and dripping, heaving life /^ of the jungle, (^ Brooding and muttering with memories of shackl : I am the nigger. Look at me. I am the nigger. 49 Digitized by Microsoft® TWO NEIGHBORS - Faces of two eternities keep looking at me. One is Omar Khayam and the red stuff wherein men forget yesterday and to-morrow and remember only the voices and songs, the stories, newspapers and fights of today. One is Louis Cornaro and a slim trick of slow, short meals across slow, short years, letting Death open the door only in slow, s! inches. I have a neighbor who swears by Omar. I have a neighbor who swears by Cornaro. Both are happ Faces of two eternities keep looking at me. Let them look. so Digitized by Microsoft® STYLE Style — go ahead talking about style. You can tell where a man gets his style just as you can tell where Pavlowa got her legs or Ty Cobb his batting eye. ~ Go on talking. Only don't take my style away. ■ It's my face. Maybe no good but anyway, my face. I talk with it, I sing with it, I see, taste and feel with it, I know why I want to keep it. Kill my style and you break Pavlowa's legs, and you blind Ty Cobb's batting eye. 51 Digitized by Microsoft® TO BEACHEY, 1912 Riding against the east, A veering, steady shadow Purrs the motor-call Of the man-bird Ready with the death-laughter In his throat And in his heart always The love of the big blue beyond. Only a man, A far fleck of shadow on the east Sitting at ease With his hands on a wheel And around him the large gray wings. Hold him, great soft wings, Keep and deal kindly, O wings. With the cool, calm shadow at the wheel. Sa Digitized by Microsoft® UNDER A HAT RIM While the hum and the hurry Of passing footfalls Beat in my ear like the restless surf Of a wind-blown sea, A soul came to me Out of the look on a face. Eyes like a lake Where a storm-wind roams Caught me from under The rim of a hat. I thought of a midsea wreck and bruised fingers clinging to a broken state-room door. 53 Digitized by Microsoft® IN A BREATH To the Williamson Brothers High noon. White sun flashes on the Michigan Aveni asphalt. Drum of hoofs and whirr of motoi Women trapsing along in flimsy clothes catchii play of sun-fire to their skin and eyes. Inside the playhouse are movies from under the se From the heat of pavements and the dust of sid walks, passers-by go in a breath to be witnesses i large cool sponges, large cool fishes, large cool va leys find ridges of coral spread silent in the soak i the ocean floor thousands of years. A naked swimmer dives. A knife in his right har shoots a streak at the throat of a shark. The tj of the shark lashes. One swing would kill the swic mer. . . Soon the knife goes into the soft unde neck of the veering fish. . . Its mouthful of teet each tooth a dagger itself, set row on row, glistei when the shuddering, yawning cadaver is hauled i by the brothers of the swimmer. ^ Outside in the street is the murmur and singing of li in the sun — horses, motors, women trapsing alot in flimsy clothes, play of sun-fire in their blood. 54 Digitized by Microsoft® BATH A MAN saw the whole world as a grinning skull and cross-bones. The rose flesh of life shriveled from all faces. Nothing counts. Everything is a fake. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a useless silence. So he saw it all. Then he went to a Mischa Elman concert. Two hours waves of sound beat on his eardrums. Music washed something or other in- side him. Music broke down and rebuilt something or other in his head and heart. He joined in five encores for the young Russian Jew with the fiddle. When he got outside his heels hit the sidewalk a new way. He was the same man in the same world as before. Only there was a singing fire and a climb of roses everlast- ingly over the woiWhe looked on. 55 Digitized by Microsoft® BRONZES The bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lin- coln Park Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr by in long processions going somewhere to keep ap- pointment for dinner and matinees and buying and selling Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are piling On the slabs of the propenade along the lake shore near by I have seen the general dare the combers come closer And make to ride his bronze horse out into the hoofs and guns of the storm. S6 Digitized by Microsoft® II I cross Lincoln Park on a winter night when the snow is falling. Lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow, his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the new- sies crying forty thousand men are dead along the Yser, his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar of the city at his bronze feet. A lithe Indian on a bronze pony, Shakespeare seated with long legs in bronze, Garibaldi in a bronze cape, they hold places in the cold, lonely snow to-night on their pedestals and so they will hold them past midnight and into the dawn. 57 Digitized by Microsoft® DUNES What do we see here in the sand dunes of the white moon alone with our thoughts, BJll, Alone with our dreams, Bill, soft as the women tying scarves around their heads dancing, Alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the other of all the dead, The dead more than all these grains of sand one by one piled here in the moon. Piled against the sky-line taking shapes like the hand of the wind wanted, What do wc see here, Bill, outside of what the wise men beat their heads on. Outside of what the poets cry for and the soldiers drive on headlong and leave their skulls in the sun for — what. Bill? 58 Digitized by Microsoft® ON THE WAY Little one, you have been buzzing in the books. Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyers And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been getting an earful of speech from trained tongues. Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike Along sand stretches on the great inland sea here And while the eastern breeze blows on us and the rest- less surge Of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever fresh monotone, -Let us ask ourselves : What is truth ? what do you or I know? How much do the wisest of the world's men know about where the massed human procession is going? You have heard the mob laughed at ? I ask you : Is not the mob rough as the mountains are rough ? And all things human rise from the mob and relapse and rise again as rain to the sea? S9 Digitized by Microsoft® READY TO KILL Ten minutes now I have been looking at this. I have gone by here before and wondered about it. This is a bronze memorial of a famous general Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver on him. I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be hauled away to the scrap yard. I put it straight to you. After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory hand, the fireman and the teamster. Have all been remembered with bronze memorials, Shaping them on the job of getting all of us Something to eat and something to wear. When they stack a few silhouettes Against the sky Here in the park. And show the real huskies that are doing the work of the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them. Then maybe I will stand here And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag in the air. And riding like hell on horseback Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way. Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men all over the sweet new grass of the prairie. 60 Digitized by Microsoft® TO A CONTEMPORARY BUNKSHOOTER / You come along. . . tearing your shirt. . . yelling about Jesus. Where do you get that stuff ? What do you know about Jesus? \ Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jeru- salem everybody liked ta have this Jesus around be- cause he never made any fake passes and everything he said went and he helped the sick and gave th^ people hope. / ./ You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist and calling us all dam fools so fierce the froth slob- bers over your lips. . . always blabbing we're all going to hell straight off and you know all about it. I've read Jesus' words. I know what he said. You don't throw any scare into me. I've got your number. I know how much you know about Jesus. He never came near clean people or dirty people but they felt cleaner because he came along. It was your crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers hired the sluggers and murderers who put Jesus out of the running. 6i Digitized by Microsoft® 62 Chicago Poems I say the same bunch backing you nailed the nails into the hands of this Jesus of Nazareth. He had lined up against him the same crooks and strong-arm men now lined up with you paying your way. This Jesus was good to look at, smelled good, listened good. He threw out something fresh and beautiful / from the skin of his body and the touch of his hands / wherever he passed along. / You slimy bunkshooter, you put a smut on every human l^lossom in reach of your rotten breath belching about hell-fire and hiccupping about this Man who lived a clean life in Galilee. When are you going to quit making the carpenters build emergency hospitals for women and girls driven crazy with wrecked nerves from your gibberish about Jesus — I put it to you again : Where do you get that stuff; what do you know about Jesus? Go ahead and bust all the chairs you want to. Smash a whole wagon load of furniture at every perform- ance. Turn sixty somersaults and stand on your nutty head. If it wasn't for the way you scare the women and kids I'd feel sorry for you and pass the hat. / I like to watch a good four-flusher work, but not when he starts people puking and calling for the doctors. } I like a man that's got nerve and can pull off a great original performance, but you — ^you're only a bug- i, house peddler of second-hand gospel — ^you're only Digitized by Microsoft® To a Contemporary Bunkshooter 63 shoving out a phoney imitation of the goods this ( Jesus wanted free as air and sunlight. -^ You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it ^ up all right with them by giving them mansions m.\ the skies after they're dead and the worms have eaten 'em. You tell $6 a week department store girls all they need is Jesus ; you take a steel trust wop, dead without having lived, gray -and shrunken at forty years of age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross and he'll be ail right. You tell poor people they don't need any more money on pay day and even if it's fierce to be out of a job, Jesus'U fix that up all right, all right— all they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say. I'm telling y(*u Jesus wouldn't stand for the stuff you're handing out..' Jesus played it different. The bank- ers and lawyers of Jerusalem got their sluggers and murderers to go after Jesus just because Jesus wouldn't play their game. He didn't sit in with the big thieves. ' I don't want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my re- ligion. I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any mem- ory except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar. I ask you to Come through and show ine where you're pouring out the blood of your life. Digitized by Microsoft® 64 Chicago Poems I've been to this suburb of Jerusalem they call Golgoth; where they nailed Him, and I know if the story i straight it was real blood ran from His hands am the nail-holes, and it was real blood spurted in re( drops where the spear of the Roman soldier rammei in between the ribs of this Jesus of Nazareth. Digitized by Microsoft® SKYSCRAPER By day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and has a soul. Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are poured out again back to the streets, prairies and valleys. It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and out all day that give the building a soul of dreams and thoughts and memories. (Dumped in the sea or fixed in a desert, who would care for the building or speak its name or ask a police- man the way to it?) Elevators slide on their cables and tubes catch letters and parcels and iron pipes carry gas and water in and ,, ^ sewage out. Wires climb with secrets, carry light and carry words, , \ afiff tell terrors and profits and loves — curses of men grappUng plans of business and questions of women ; ; in plots of love. Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the earth and hold the building to a turning planet. Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and hold together the stone walls and floors. 65 Digitized by Microsoft® 66 Chicago Poems Hour by hour the hand of the mason and the stuff of tl mortar clinch the pieces and parts to the shape e architect voted. Hour by hour the sun and the rain, the air and the rus and the press of time running into centuries, ph on the building inside and out and use it. ' Men who sunk the pilings and mixed the mortar are la: in graves where the wind whistles a wild song witl ' out words And so are men who strung the wires and fixed the pipi and tubes and those who saw it rise floor by floor. ■ Souls of them all are here, even the hod carrier beg^r at back doors hundreds of miles away and the bricl layer who went to state's prison for shooting anothi man while drunk. /(One man fell from a girder and broke his neck at tl ;| end of a straight plunge — he is here — ^his soul h; ' gone into the stones of the building.) ! On the office doors from tier to tier — ^hundreds of nam I and each name standing for a face written aero with a dead child, a passionate lover, a driving ar bition for a million dollar business or a lobstei ease of life. Behind the signs on the doors they work and the wal tell nothing from room to room. Ten-dollar-a-week stenographers take letters from co poration officers, lawyers, efficiency engineers, ai tons of letters go bundled from the building to : ends of the earth. Digitized by Microsoft® Skyscraper 67 Smiles and tears of each office girl go into the soul of • the building just the same as the master-men who rule the building. Hands of clocks turn to noon hours and each floor empties its men and women who go away and eat and come back to work. Toward the end of the afternoon all work slackens and all jobs go slower as the people feel day closing on them. One by one the floors are emptied. . . The uniformed elevator men are gone. Pails clang. . . Scrubbers work, talking in foreign tongues. Broom and water I and mop clean from the floors human dust and spit, and machine grime of the day. I Spelled in electric fire on the roof are words telling I miles of houses and people where to buy a thing for money. The sign speaks till midnight. Darkness on the hallways. Voices echo. Silence holds. . . Watchmen walk slow from floor to floor and try the doors. Revolvers bulge from their hip pockets. . . Steel safes stand in comers. Money, is stacked in them. A young watchman leans at a window and sees the lights of barges butting their way across a harbor, nets of red and white lanterns in a railroad yard, and a span of glooms splashed with lines of white and blurs of crosses and clusters over the sleeping city. By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul. Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® HANDFULS Digitized by Microsoft® Digitized by Microsoft® FOG The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. 71 Digitized by Microsoft® POOL Out of the fire Came a man sunken To less than cinders, A tea-cup of ashes or so. And I, The gold in the house, Writhed into a stiff pool. 7» Digitized by Microsoft® JAN KUBELIK Your bow swept over a string, and a long low note quivered to the air. (A mother of Bohemia sobs over a new child perfect learning to suck milk.) Your bow ran fast over all the. high strings fluttering and wild. (All the girls in Bohemia are laughing on a Sunday after- noon in the hills with their lovers.) 73 Digitized by Microsoft® CHOOSE The single clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose : For we meet by one or the other. 74 Digitized by Microsoft® CRIMSON Crimson is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold. Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire. (A great man I know is dead and while he lies in his coffin a gone flame I sit here in cumbering shadows and smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.) 71 Digitized by Microsoft® WHITELIGHT Your whitelight flashes the frost to-night Moon of the purple and silent west. Remember me one of your lovers of dreams. 76 Digitized by Microsoft® FLUX Sand of the sea runs red Where the sunset reaches and quivers. Sand of the sea runs yellow Where the moon slants and wavers. 77 Digitized by Microsoft® KIN Brother, I am fire Surging under the ocean floor. I shall never meet you, brother — Not for years, anyhow; Maybe thousands of years, brother. Then I will warm you, Hold you close, wrap you in circles, Use you and change you — Maybe thousands of years, brother. 78 Digitized by Microsoft® WHITE SHOULDERS Your white shoulders I remember And your shrug of laughter.