The Right To Grief
To Certain Poets About to Die
Take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow,
Over the dead child of a millionaire,
And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank
Which the millionaire might order his secretary to
scratch off
And get cashed.
Very well,
You for your grief and I for mine.
Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to.
I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky.
His job is sweeping blood off the floor.
He gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works
And it's many tubs of blood he shoves out with a broom
day by day.
Now his three year old daughter
Is in a white coffin that cost him a week's wages.
Every Saturday night he will pay the undertaker fifty
cents till the debt is wiped out.
The hunky and his wife and the kids
Cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the white box.
They remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor bills.
They are glad it is gone for the rest of the family now
will have more to eat and wear.
Yet before the majesty of Death they cry around the coffin
And wipe their eyes with red bandanas and sob when
the priest says, "God have mercy on us all."
I have a right to feel my throat choke about this.
You take your grief and I mine--see?
To-morrow there is no funeral and the hunky goes back
to his job sweeping blood off the floor at a dollar
seventy cents a day.
All he does all day long is keep on shoving hog blood
ahead of him with a broom.
Carl Sandburg
Vous avez aimé cette poésie ? faites la connaître !
D'autres poésies de Carl Sandburg
A Coin
Your western heads here cast on money,
You are the two...
A Fence
Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the
A Sphinx
Close-mouthed you sat five thousand years and never let out a...
A Teamster's Farewell
Sobs En Route to a Penitentiary
Good-by...
A.E.F.
There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,
The...
All Day Long
All day long in fog and wind,
The waves have flung their...
Among the Red Guns
Among the red guns,
In the hearts of soldiers
Running...
And They Obey
Smash down the cities.
Knock the walls to pieces.
Anna Imroth
Cross the hands over the breast here--so.
Straighten the...
Aprons of Silence
Many things I might have said today.
And I kept my mouth...
Précédentes poésies
[290] THESE MOMENTS OF INNOCENCE...
This morning i awoke from a dream,
to the quintessence of...
[260] TALE OF A TEAR DROP
A single Tear Drop-
Ovular formed,
Dangling on the...
[250] BY THE STREAMS OF KILLCLARKE.........................(Summer 2008 Competition Winner)
And the stream was long and narrow
Running 'side.....the...
[240] BRING ME DEATH, WHILE I SLEEP WITHIN A DREAM
And..... of what may I do for you........ in your final hour
[230] ROMANCE BE THE COLOUR AQUA
Somewhere between emerald 'n topaz is a world of aqua
