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 city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
Laughing Corn
- THERE was a high majestic fooling
- Day before yesterday in the yellow corn.
- And day after to-morrow 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 long-tailed 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.
- Always--I 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.
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.
-
Fog
- THE fog comes
- on little cat feet.
It sits looking
- over harbor and city
- on silent haunches
- and then moves on.
-
- 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, sand-swept with a sea-breath on it:
- This was Flanders, the unknown, the quiet,
- The place where cows hunted lush cuds of green on lowlands,
- And the raw-boned plowmen took horses with long shanks
- Out in the dawn to the sea-breath.
Flanders sat slow-spoken amid slow-swung windmills,
- Slow-circling 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.
-
- Theme in Yellow
I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am fooling.
-
- They All Want to Play Hamlet
They all want to play Hamlet.
They have not exactly seen their fathers killed
Nor their mothers in a frame-up to kill,
Nor an Ophelia dying with a dust gagging the heart,
Not exactly the spinning circles of singing golden spiders,
Not exactly this have they got at nor the meaning of flowers--O flowers, flowers slung by a dancing girl--in the saddest play the inkfish, Shakespeare, ever wrote;
Yet they all want to play Hamlet because it is sad like all actors are sad and to stand by an open grave with a joker's skull in the hand and then to say over slow and say over slow wise, keen, beautiful words masking a heart that's breaking, breaking,
This is something that calls and calls to their blood.
They are acting when they talk about it and they know it is acting to be particular about it and yet: They all want to play Hamlet.
-
- A Sphinx
- Close-Mouthed you sat five thousand years and never let out a whisper.
Processions came by, marchers, asking questions you answered with grey eyes never blinking, shut lips never talking.
Not one croak of anything you know has come from your cat crouch of ages.
I am one of those who know all you know and I keep my questions: I know the answers you hold.
Back Yard
Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.
An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion.
A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month; to-night they are throwing you kisses.
An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a cherry tree in his back yard.
The clocks say I must go--I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking white thoughts you rain down.
Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.
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