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

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:                What place is this?                Where are we now?                I am the grass.                Let me work.

Austerlitz: a village, now named Slavkov, where on Dec. 2, 1805,

Napoleon led an outnumbered French army to victory over Austrian and Russian forces.

Waterloo:

Napoleon's final defeat, near this town in Belgium on June 18, 1815, by a European coalition including Austria,

Great Britain,

Prussia and Russia.

Gettysberg: a decisive victory by the Union army in the American civil war was won near this Pennsylvania town July 1-3, 1863.

Ypres: a town in Belgium at which three battles were fought in World War I (1914, 1915, and 1917) resulting in over 600,000 casualties Verdun: during most of 1916 the Allied and German armies fought over this French town and castle, the battles ending indecisively with nearly 700,000 casualties.

The poem is taken from Cornhuskers by Carl Sandburg 1918 publ:

Henry Holt and Co