Carl Sandburg – Cool Tombs

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? ... in the dust, in the cool tombs?

Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns ... tell me if the lovers are losers ... tell me if any get more than the lovers ... in the dust ... in the cool tombs.

Carl Sandburg – Bronzes

I

The bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln Park

Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr by in long processions 

going somewhere to keep apppointment for dinner and matineés and buying and selling

Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are piling

On the slabs of the promenade along the lake shore near by

I have seen the general dare the combers come closer

And make to ride his bronze horse out into the hoofs and guns of the storm.

II

I cross Lincoln Park on a winter night when the snow is falling.

Lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow, 

his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the newsies crying forty thousand men are dead along the Yser, 

his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar of the city at his bronze feet.

A lithe Indian on a bronze pony, Shakespeare seated with long legs in bronze, 

Garibaldi in a bronze cape, they hold places in the cold, 

lonely snow to-night on their pedestals and so they will hold them past midnight and into the dawn.

Carl Sandburg – Boy and Father

The boy Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer.

The leather law books of Alexander’s father fill a room like hay in a barn.

Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build,

 a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books.

   The rain beats on the windows

   And the raindrops run down the window glass

   And the raindrops slide off the green blinds down the siding.

The boy Alexander dreams of Napoleon in John C. Abbott’s history, 

Napoleon the grand and lonely man wronged, Napoleon in his life wronged and in his memory wronged.

The boy Alexander dreams of the cat Alice saw, 

the cat fading off into the dark and leaving the teeth of its Cheshire smile lighting the gloom.

Buffaloes, blizzards, way down in Texas, in the panhandle of Texas snuggling close to New Mexico,

These creep into Alexander’s dreaming by the window when his father talks

 with strange men about land down in Deaf Smith County.

Alexander’s father tells the strange men: Five years ago we ran a Ford out on the prairie and chased antelopes.

Only once or twice in a long while has Alexander heard his father say ‘my first wife’ so-and-so and such-and-such.

A few times softly the father has told Alexander, 

‘Your mother . . . was a beautiful woman . . . but we won’t talk about her.’

Always Alexander listens with a keen listen when he hears his father mention ‘my first wife’ or ‘Alexander’s mother.’

Alexander’s father smokes a cigar and the Episcopal rector smokes a cigar, 

and the words come often: mystery of life, mystery of life.

These two come into Alexander’s head blurry and grey while the rain beats on the windows 

and the raindrops run down the window glass and the raindrops slide off the green blinds and down the siding.

These and: There is a God, there must be a God, how can there be rain or sun unless there is a God?

So from the wrongs of Napoleon and the Cheshire cat smile on to the buffaloes and blizzards of Texas 

and on to his mother and to God, so the blurry grey rain dreams of Alexander have gone on five minutes, 

maybe ten, keeping slow easy time to the raindrops on the window glass and the raindrops sliding off the green blinds and down the siding.

Carl Sandburg – The Abracadabra Boys

The abracadabra boys—have they been in the stacks and cloisters? Have they picked up languages for throwing into chow mein poems?

Have they been to a sea of jargons and brought back jargons? Their salutations go: Who cometh? and, It ith I cometh.

They know postures from impostures, pistils from pustules, to hear them tell it. They foregather and make pitty pat with each other in Latin and in their private pig Latin, very ofay.

They give with passwords. “Who cometh?” “A kumquat cometh.” “And how cometh the kumquat?” “On an abbadabba, ancient and honorable sire, ever and ever on an abbadabba.”

Do they have fun? Sure—their fun is being what they are, like our fun is being what we are—only they are more sorry for us being what we are than we are for them being what they are.

Pointing at you, at us, at the rabble, they sigh and say, these abracadabra boys, “They lack jargons. They fail to distinguish between pustules and pistils. They knoweth not how the kumquat cometh.”

Charles Bukowski – Hello, Willie Shoemaker

the Chinaman said don’t take the hardware

and gave me a steak I couldn’t cut (except the fat)

and there was an ant circling the coffee cup;

I left a dime tip and broke out a stick of cancer,

and outside I gave an old bum who looked about

the way I felt, I gave him a quarter,

and then I went up to see the old man

strong as steel girders, fit for bombers and blondes,

up the green rotten steps that housed rats

and past the secretaries showing leg and doing nothing

and the old man sat there looking at me

through two pairs of glasses and a vacation in Paris,

and he said, Kid, I hear you been takin’ Marylou out,

and I said, just to dinner, boss,

and he said, just to dinner, eh? you couldn’t hold

that broad’s pants on with all the rivets on 5th street,

and please remember you are a shipping clerk,

I am the boss here and I pay these broads and I pay you.

yes, sir, I said, and I felt he was going to skip it

but he slid my last check across the desk

and I took it and walked out

past

all the lovely legs, the skirts pulled up to the ass,

Marylou’s ass, Ann’s ass, Vicki’s ass, all of them,

and I went down to the bar

and George said whatya gonna do now,

and I said go to Russia or Hollywood Park,

and I looked up in time to see Marylou come in,

the long thin nose, the delicate face, the lips, the legs,

the breasts, the music, the talk the love the laughing

and she said

I quit when I found out

and the bastard got down on his knees and cried

and kissed the hem of my skirt and offered me money

and I

walked out

and he blubbered like a baby.

George, I said, another drink, and I put a quarter in

the juke

and the sun came out

and I looked outside in time to see the old bum

with my quarter

and a little more luck

that had turned into a happy wine-bottle,

and a bird even flew by cheep cheep,

right there on Eastside downtown, no kidding,

and the Chinaman came in for a quickie

claiming somebody had stolen a spoon and a coffee cup

and I leaned over and bit Marylou on the ear

and the whole joint rocked with music and freedom

and I decided that Russia was too far away

and Hollywood Park just close enough.