Cornhuskers. 1918.
#AmericanWriters
LET down your braids of hair, lad… Cross your legs and sit before the… And gaze long on lines under your… Life writes; men dance. And you know how men pay women.
TEN minutes now I have been look… I have gone by here before and won… This is a bronze memorial of a fam… Riding horseback with a flag and a… on him.
THE KNEES of this proud woman are bone. The elbows of this proud woman
GUNS, Long, steel guns, Pointed from the war ships In the name of the war god. Straight, shining, polished guns,
YOUR bony head, Jazbo, O dock w… Those grappling hooks, those wheel… The dome and the wings of you, ***… The red roof and the door of you, I know where your songs came from.
I HAVE love And a child, A banjo And shadows. (Losses of God,
Five geese deploy mysteriously. Onward proudly with flagstaffs, Hearses with silver bugles, Bushes of plum-blossoms dropping For ten mystic web-feet—
DID I see a crucifix in your eye… and nails and Roman soldiers and a dusk Golgotha? Did I see Mary, the changed woman… washing the feet of all men,
RED gold of pools, Sunset furrows six o’clock, And the farmer done in the fields And the cows in the barns with bul… Take the cows and the farmer,
COME you, cartoonists, Hang on a strap with me here At seven o’clock in the morning On a Halsted street car. Take your pencils
(For Paula)THE GRIP of the ice… The silvers chase purple. The purples tag silver. They let out their runners Here where summer says to the lili…
I DON’T blame the kettle drums-t… And the snare drums-I know what t… And the harring booming bass drums… The howling spears of the Northwe… The lullabies of the Southwest ge…
AMONG the mountains I wandered… red crag and was amazed; On the beach where the long push u… maneuvers, I stood silent; Under the stars on the prairie wat…
It’s a jazz affair, drum crashes a… The trombone pony neighs and the t… The banjo tickles and titters too… The chippies talk about the funnie… The cartoonists weep in their beer…
Gather the stars if you wish it so… Gather the songs and keep them. Gather the faces of women. Gather for keeping years and years… And then . . .