Sheep
Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep One by one going up the hill and over the fence one by One four-footed pattering up and over one by one wiggling Their stub tails as they
Adelaide Crapsey
AMONG the bumble-bees in red-top hay, a freckled field of brown-eyed Susans dripping yellow leaves in July, I read your heart in a book. And your mouth of blue pansy-I know somewhere I have
Drumnotes
DAYS of the dead men, Danny. Drum for the dead, drum on your remembering heart. Jaurès, a great love-heart of France, a slug of lead in the red valves. Kitchener of Khartoum, tall, cold,
Women Washing Their Hair
THEY have painted and sung The women washing their hair, And the plaits and strands in the sun, And the golden combs And the combs of elephant tusks And the combs of buffalo horn
Working Girls
THE working girls in the morning are going to work Long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores And factories, thousands with little brick-shaped Lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms. Each morning
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
People Who Must
I PAINTED on the roof of a skyscraper. I painted a long while and called it a day’s work. The people on a corner swarmed and the traffic cop’s whistle never let up all
Sumach and Birds
IF you never came with a pigeon rainbow purple Shining in the six o’clock September dusk: If the red sumach on the autumn roads Never danced on the flame of your eyelashes: If the
Letter S
THE RIVER is gold under a sunset of Illinois. It is a molten gold someone pours and changes. A woman mixing a wedding cake of butter and eggs Knows what the sunset is pouring
Finish
DEATH comes once, let it be easy. Ring one bell for me once, let it go at that. Or ring no bell at all, better yet. Sing one song if I die. Sing John
Clean Hands
IT is something to face the sun and know you are free. To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth And know your heart has kept a promise and the
A Million Young Workmen, 1915
A MILLION young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads, And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses.
Washerwoman
THE WASHERWOMAN is a member of the Salvation Army. And over the tub of suds rubbing underwear clean She sings that Jesus will wash her sins away And the red wrongs she has done
Soiled Dove
Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she married a corporation lawyer who picked her from a Ziegfeld chorus. Before then she never took anybody’s money and paid for her
High Conspiratorial Person
OUT of the testimony of such reluctant lips, out of the oaths and mouths of such scrupulous liars, out of perjurers whose hands swore by God to the white sun before all men, Out