Sherry Chandler

Mr. Sandburg’s birthday

Carl Sandburg was born on this day in 1878.

Because we are expecting a winter storm, this poem seems maybe appropriate, though I hope things don’t get this bad here:

Blizzard Notes

I DON’T blame the kettle drums—they are hungry.
And the snare drums—I know what they want—they are empty too.
And the harring booming bass drums—they are hungriest of all.

. . .

The howling spears of the Northwest die down.
The lullabies of the Southwest get a chance, a mother song.
A cradle moon rides out of a torn hole in the ragbag top of the sky.

— Carl Sandburg. Cornhuskers. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1918; Bartleby.com, 1999

What do you do on January two?

It’s a Saturdarday, the bland second day of January, and we are dull with holiday excess and the weather is bitter cold (for here) and I have been hard at work on my “real” poetry and I got nothin’ for the blog.

So I went to Bartleby and searched on January and found this by Carl Sandburg. I’d never seen it before. I like it. It seems like a good poem for January 2.

And anyway it beats Duanne Eddy playing “Ghost Riders in the Sky.”

Manitoba Childe Roland

LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house and whistling a wolf song under the eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl the Browning poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.

And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not understand.

A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and nothing happens—and he goes on and on—and it’s all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And he goes on and on—and nothing happens—and he comes on a horse’s skull, dry bones of a dead horse—and you know more than ever it’s all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And the man raises a horn to his lips and blows—he fixes a proud neck and forehead toward the empty sky and the empty land—and blows one last wonder-cry.

And as the shuttling automatic memory of man clicks off its results willy-nilly and inevitable as the snick of a mouse-trap or the trajectory of a 42-centimeter projectile,

I flash to the form of a man to his hips in snow drifts of Manitoba and Minnesota—in the sled derby run from Winnipeg to Minneapolis.

He is beaten in the race the first day out of Winnipeg—the lead dog is eaten by four team mates—and the man goes on and on—running while the other racers ride—running while the other racers sleep—

Lost in a blizzard twenty-four hours, repeating a circle of travel hour after hour—fighting the dogs who dig holes in the snow and whimper for sleep—pushing on—running and walking five hundred miles to the end of the race—almost a winner—one toe frozen, feet blistered and frost-bitten.

And I know why a thousand young men of the Northwest meet him in the finishing miles and yell cheers—I know why judges of the race call him a winner and give him a special prize even though he is a loser.

I know he kept under his shirt and around his thudding heart amid the blizzards of five hundred miles that one last wonder-cry of Childe Roland—and I told the six-year-old girl all about it.

And while the January wind was ripping at the shingles and whistling a wolf song under the eaves, her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful to her and she could not understand.

— Sandburg, Carl. Cornhuskers. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1918; Bartleby.com, 1999

One view of capital justice

Now that I am no longer in the jury pool for a death penalty case, now that it has moved to another venue and won’t even be tried in my town, I no longer feel constrained about posting this Sandburg poem. It states my views. I thought about reading it to the judge, but as it turned out, I didn’t ever get as far as an interview.

Killers

I AM put high over all others in the city today.

I am the killer who kills for those who wish a killing today.

Here is a strong young man who killed.
There was a driving wind of city dust and horse dung blowing and he stood at an intersection of five sewers and there pumped the bullets of an automatic pistol into another man, a fellow citizen.
Therefore, the prosecuting attorneys, fellow citizens, and a jury of his peers, also fellow citizens, listened to the testimony of other fellow citizens, policemen, doctors, and after a verdict of guilty, the judge, a fellow citizen, said: I sentence you to be hanged by the neck till you are dead.

So there is a killer to be killed and I am the killer of the killer for today.
I don’t know why it beats in my head in the lines I read once in an old school reader: I’m to be queen of the May, mother, I’m to be queen of the May.
Anyhow it comes back in language just like that today.

I am the high honorable killer today.
There are five million people in the state, five million killers for whom I kill
I am the killer who kills today for five million killers who wish a killing.

—Carl Sandburg, from Smoke and Steel (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920) Bartleby.com, 2000.

Carl Sandburg

Remorse

The horse’s name was Remorse.
There were people said, �Gee, what a nag!�
And they were Edgar Allan Poe bugs and so
They called him Remorse.

When he was a gelding
He flashed his heels to other ponies
And threw dust in the noses of other ponies
And won his first race and his second
And another and another and hardly ever
Came under the wire behind the other runners.

And so, Remorse, who is gone, was the hero of a play
By Henry Blossom, who is now gone.

What is there to a monicker? Call me anything.
A nut, a cheese, something that the cat brought in.
Nick me with any old name.
Class me up for a fish, a gorilla, a slant head, an egg, a ham.
Only � slam me across the ears sometimes � and hunt for a white star
In my forehead and twist the bang of my forelock around it.
Make a wish for me. Maybe I will light out like a streak of wind.

—Carl Sandburg, from Smoke and Steel. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920; Bartleby.com, 2000.

Carl Sandburg

[Ed. note: this post should not be construed as a party-line statement.]

The Liars

A LIAR goes in fine clothes.
A liar goes in rags.
A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.
A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.
And the stonecutters earn a living�with lies�on the tombs of liars.

A liar looks �em in the eye
And lies to a woman,
Lies to a man, a pal, a child, a fool.
And he is an old liar; we know him many years back.

A liar lies to nations.
A liar lies to the people.
A liar takes the blood of the people
And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie,
A laugh in his neck,
A lie in his mouth.
And this liar is an old one; we know him many years.
He is straight as a dog�s hind leg.
He is straight as a corkscrew.
He is white as a black cat�s foot at midnight.

The tongue of a man is tied on this,
On the liar who lies to nations,
The liar who lies to the people.
The tongue of a man is tied on this
And ends: To hell with �em all.
To hell with �em all.

It�s a song hard as a riveter�s hammer,
Hard as the sleep of a crummy hobo,
Hard as the sleep of a lousy doughboy,
Twisted as a shell-shock idiot�s gibber.

The liars met where the doors were locked.
They said to each other: Now for war.
The liars fixed it and told �em: Go.

Across their tables they fixed it up,
Behind their doors away from the mob.
And the guns did a job that nicked off millions.
The guns blew seven million off the map,
The guns sent seven million west.
Seven million shoving up the daisies.
Across their tables they fixed it up,
The liars who lie to nations.

And now
Out of the butcher�s job
And the boneyard junk the maggots have cleaned,
Where the jaws of skulls tell the jokes of war ghosts,
Out of this they are calling now: Let�s go back where we were.
Let us run the world again, us, us.

Where the doors are locked the liars say: Wait and we�ll cash in again.

So I hear The People talk.
I hear them tell each other:
Let the strong men be ready.
Let the strong men watch.
Let your wrists be cool and your head clear.
Let the liars get their finish,
The liars and their waiting game, waiting a day again
To open the doors and tell us: War! get out to your war again.

So I hear The People tell each other:
Look at to-day and to-morrow.
Fix this clock that nicks off millions
When The Liars say it�s time.
Take things in your own hands.
To hell with �em all,
The liars who lie to nations,
The liars who lie to The People.

—Carl Sandburg, Smoke and Steel. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920; Bartleby.com, 2000.