Killers
I am singing to
Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
Hard as a man in handcuffs,
Held where he cannot move: Under the
Are sixteen million men,
Chosen for shining teeth,
Sharp eyes, hard legs,
And a running of young warm blood in their wrists. And a red juice runs on the green grass;
And a red juice soaks the dark soil.
And the sixteen million are killing. . . and killing and killing. I never forget them day or night:
They beat on my head for memory of them;
They pound on my heart and I cry back to them,
To their homes and women, dreams and games. I wake in the night and smell the trenches,
And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines—Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark:
Some of them long sleepers for always,
Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always,
Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak,
Eating and drinking, toiling. . . on a long job of killing.
Sixteen million men.
Carl Sandburg
Other author posts
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
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
Iron
Guns, Long, steel guns, Pointed from the war In the name of the war god
Summer Stars
Bend low again, night of summer stars So near you are, sky of summer stars, So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars, Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
