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Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg

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 battle-drabbed, battle-soaked 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?  
 
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?

Cornhuskers. 1918.

#AmericanWriters

Altre opere di Carl Sandburg...
The Harbor

Passing through huddled and ugly w… By doorways where women Looked from their hunger-deep eyes… Haunted with shadows of hunger-han… Out from the huddled and ugly wall…
Jack

JACK was a swarthy, swaggering s… He worked thirty years on the rail… and his hands were tougher than so… He married a tough woman and they… and the woman died and the childre…
Flanders

FLANDERS, the name of a place,… Spells itself with letters, is wri… “Where is Flanders?” was asked on… Flanders known only to those who l… And milked cows and made cheese an…
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.
At a Window

Give me hunger, O you gods that sit and give The world its orders. Give me hunger, pain and want, Shut me out with shame and failure
 1
Telegram

I SAW a telegram handed a two hundred pound man at a desk. And the little scrap of paper charged the air like a set of crystals in a chemist’s tube to a whispering pinch of salt. Cross ...
Cripple

ONCE when I saw a cripple Gasping slowly his last days with… Looking from hollow eyes, calling… Desperately gesturing with wasted… In the dark and dust of a house do…
Night Movement-New York

IN the night, when the sea-winds… And cool the loud streets that kep… In the night, when the sea-birds c… The lights that cut on the skyline… In the night, when the trains and…
Old-Fashioned Requited Love

I HAVE ransacked the encyclopedi… And slid my fingers among topics a… Looking for you. And the answer comes slow. There seems to be no answer.
Far Rockaway Night Till Morning

WHAT can we say of the night? The fog night, the moon night, the… There swept out of the sea a song. There swept out of the sea-torn wh… There came on the coast wind drive
Prairie

I WAS born on the prairie and th… slogan. Here the water went down, the iceb… yellow sandy loam. Here between the sheds of the Roc…
A.E.F.

There will be a rusty gun on the w… The rifle grooves curling with fla… A spider will make a silver string… darkest, warmest corner of it. The trigger and the range-finder,…
And They Obey

SMASH down the cities. Knock the walls to pieces. Break the factories and cathedrals… and homes Into loose piles of stone and lumb…
Dream Girl

YOU will come one day in a waver… Tender as dew, impetuous as rain, The tan of the sun will be on your… The purr of the breeze in your mur… You will pose with a hill-flower g…
 1
Potato Blossom Songs and Jigs

My knees are loose-like, my feet want to sling their selves. I feel like tickling you under the chin-honey-and a-asking: Why Does a Chicken Cross the Road? When the hens are a-laying eg...



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