Fellow Citizens
I DRANK musty ale at the Illinois Athletic Club with The millionaire manufacturer of Green River butter One night And his face had the shining light of an old-time Quaker, He spoke of a
Falltime
GOLD of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon, Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue, Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts, Shining five and six in a row
Aztec
You came from the Aztecs With a copper on your fore-arms Tawnier than a sunset Saying good-by to an even river. And I said, you remember, Those fore-arms of yours Were finer than bronzes
Jungheimer's
In western fields of corn and northern timber lands, They talk about me, a saloon with a soul, The soft red lights, the long curving bar, The leather seats and dim corners, Tall brass
Galoots
GALOOTS, you hairy, hankering, Snousle on the bones you eat, chew at the gristle and lick the last of it. Grab off the bones in the paws of other galoots-hook your claws in their
Haunts
THERE are places I go when I am strong. One is a marsh pool where I used to go with a long-ear hound-dog. One is a wild crabapple tree; I was there a moonlight
Old Timers
I AM an ancient reluctant conscript. On the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans. On the march of Miltiades’ phalanx I had a haft and head; I had a bristling
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
Hoodlums
I AM a hoodlum, you are a hoodlum, we and all of us are a world of hoodlums-maybe so. I hate and kill better men than I am, so do you, so do all
Pick Offs
THE TELESCOPE picks off star dust On the clean steel sky and sends it to me. The telephone picks off my voice and Sends it cross country a thousand miles. The eyes in my
Loin Cloth
BODY of Jesus taken down from the cross Carved in ivory by a lover of Christ, It is a child’s handful you are here, The breadth of a man’s finger, And this ivory loin
Statistics
NAPOLEON shifted, Restless in the old sarcophagus And murmured to a watchguard: “Who goes there?” “Twenty-one million men, Soldiers, armies, guns, Twenty-one million Afoot, horseback, In the air, Under the sea.” And Napoleon turned
Prairie
I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan. Here the water went down,
Knucks
IN Abraham Lincoln’s city, Where they remember his lawyer’s shingle, The place where they brought him Wrapped in battle flags, Wrapped in the smoke of memories From Tallahassee to the Yukon, The place now
The Walking Man of Rodin
LEGS hold a torso away from the earth. And a regular high poem of legs is here. Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs Out of ooze and over the loam