Cornhuskers. 1918.
#Americans
LIPS half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hour…
FROM the time of the early radis… To the time of the standing corn Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes. There are laws in the village agai… The law says a weed is wrong and s…
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.
I DON’T know how he came, shambling, dark, and strong. He stood in the city and told men: My people are fools, my people are… Always he kept on asking: Where d…
HOG Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nat… Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders:
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…
THE Government—I heard about th… I went out to find it. I said I w… it when I saw it. Then I saw a policeman dragging a… the callaboose. It was the Govern…
BOTH were jailbirds; no speechma… And both were lights snuffed out..… Who knew the hearts of these booze…
I HAVE kept all, not one is thro… The red ones and the blue, the lon… Keep them: I tell my heart: keep… They came once, they came easy, th… Like any sudden, presumptuous, bea…
There was a high majestic fooling Day before yesterday in the yellow… And day after to-morrow in the yel… There will be high majestic foolin… The ears ripen in late summer
SLING me under the sea. Pack me down in the salt and wet. No farmer’s plow shall touch my bo… No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak How jokes are gone and empty is my…
THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neit… The sins of Kalamazoo are a convi… And the people who sin the sins of… They run to drabs and grays-and so… Yes, Kalamazoo is a spot on the m…
SAND of the sea runs red Where the sunset reaches and quive… Sand of the sea runs yellow Where the moon slants and wavers.
SMASH down the cities. Knock the walls to pieces. Break the factories and cathedrals… and homes Into loose piles of stone and lumb…
THIS is the song I rested with: The right shoulder of a strong man… The face of the rain that drizzled… The eyes of a child who slept whil… The petals of peony pink that flut…