Ethics and Morality

Two Neighbors

Faces of two eternities keep looking at me.


One is Omar Khayam and the red stuff
wherein men forget yesterday and to-morrow
and remember only the voices and songs,
the stories, newspapers and fights of today.


One is Louis Cornaro and a slim trick
of slow, short meals across slow, short years,
letting Death open the door only in slow, short inches.


I have a neighbor who swears by Omar.
I have a neighbor who swears by Cornaro.
Both are happy.
Faces of two eternities keep looking at me.
Let them look.

To Certain Journeymen

Undertakers, hearse drivers, grave diggers,
I speak to you as one not afraid of your business.


You handle dust going to a long country,


You know the secret behind your job is the same whether
you lower the coffin with modern, automatic machinery,
well-oiled and noiseless, or whether the
body is laid in by naked hands and then covered
by the shovels.


Your day's work is done with laughter many days of the year,
And you earn a living by those who say good-by today
in thin whispers.

Threes


I was a boy when I heard three red words
a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets
for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity--I asked
why men die for words.


I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns,
lilacs, told me the high golden words are:
Mother, Home, and Heaven--other older men with
face decorations said: God, Duty, Immortality
--they sang these threes slow from deep lungs.


Years ticked off their say-so on the great clocks
of doom and damnation, soup, and nuts: meteors flashed
their say-so: and out of great Russia came three
dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die
for: Bread, Peace, Land.


And I met a marine of the U.S.A., a leatherneck with a girl on his knee
for a memory in ports circling the earth and he said: Tell me how to say
three things and I always get by--gimme a plate of ham and eggs--how
much--and--do you love me, kid?

The Hangman at Home

What does a hangman think about
When he goes home at night from work?
When he sits down with his wife and
Children for a cup of coffee and a
Plate of ham and eggs, do they ask
Him if it was a good day's work
And everything went well or do they
Stay off some topics and kill about
The weather, baseball, politics
And the comic strips in the papers
And the movies? Do they look at his
Hands when he reaches for the coffee
Or the ham and eggs? If the little
Ones say, Daddy, play horse, here's
A rope--does he answer like a joke:
I seen enough rope for today?
Or does his face light up like a
Bonfire of joy and does he say:
It's a good and dandy world we live
'In. And if a white face moon looks
In through a window where a baby girl
Sleeps and the moon-gleams mix with
Baby ears and baby hair--the hangman--
How does he act then? It must be easy
For him. Anything is easy for a hangman,
I guess.

Salvage


Guns on the battle lines have pounded now a year
between Brussels and Paris.


And, William Morris, when I read your old chapter on
the great arches and naves and little whimsical
corners of the Churches of Northern France--Brr-rr!


I'm glad you're a dead man, William Morris, I'm glad
you're down in the damp and mouldy, only a memory
instead of a living man--I'm glad you're gone.


You never lied to us, William Morris, you loved the
shape of those stones piled and carved for you to
dream over and wonder because workmen got joy
of life into them,


Workmen in aprons singing while they hammered, and
praying, and putting their songs and prayers into
the walls and roofs, the bastions and cornerstones
and gargoyles--all their children and kisses of
women and wheat and roses growing.


I say, William Morris, I'm glad you're gone, I'm glad
you're a dead man.


Guns on the battle lines have pounded a year now between
Brussels and Paris.

Ready to Kill

Ten minutes now I have been looking at this.
I have gone by here before and wondered about it.
This is a bronze memorial of a famous general
Riding horseback with a flag and a sword and a revolver
on him.
I want to smash the whole thing into a pile of junk to be
hauled away to the scrap yard.
I put it straight to you,
After the farmer, the miner, the shop man, the factory
hand, the fireman and the teamster,
Have all been remembered with bronze memorials,
Shaping them on the job of getting all of us
Something to eat and something to wear,
When they stack a few silhouettes
Against the sky
Here in the park,
And show the real huskies that are doing the work of
the world, and feeding people instead of butchering them,
Then maybe I will stand here
And look easy at this general of the army holding a flag
in the air,
And riding like hell on horseback
Ready to kill anybody that gets in his way,
Ready to run the red blood and slush the bowels of men
all over the sweet new grass of the prairie.

Population Drifts

New-mown hay smell and wind of the plain made her
a woman whose ribs had the power of the hills in
them and her hands were tough for work and there
was passion for life in her womb.


She and her man crossed the ocean and the years that
marked their faces saw them haggling with landlords
and grocers while six children played on the stones
and prowled in the garbage cans.


One child coughed its lungs away, two more have adenoids
and can neither talk nor run like their mother,
one is in jail, two have jobs in a box factory


And as they fold the pasteboard, they wonder what the
wishing is and the wistful glory in them that flutters
faintly when the glimmer of spring comes on
the air or the green of summer turns brown:


They do not know it is the new-mown hay smell calling
and the wind of the plain praying for them to come
back and take hold of life again with tough hands
and with passion.

Lawyer


When the jury files in to deliver a verdict after weeks of direct and cross examinations,
hot clashes
of lawyers and cool decisions of the judge,
There are points of high silence--twiddling of thumbs is at an end--bailiffs near
cuspidors take fresh
chews of tobacco and wait--and the clock has a chance for its ticking to be heard.
A lawyer for the defense clears his throat and holds himself ready if the word is "Guilty"
to enter
motion for a new trial, speaking in a soft voice, speaking in a voice slightly colored with
bitter wrongs
mingled with monumental patience, speaking with mythic Atlas shoulders of many
preposterous,
unjust circumstances.

Ice Handler

I know an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice-box, helps himself to cold ham
and rye bread,
Tells the bartender it’s hotter than yesterday and will be hotter yet to-morrow, by
Jesus,
And is on his way with his head in the air and a hard pair of fists.
He spends a dollar or so every Saturday night on a two hundred pound woman who
washes dishes in the Hotel Morrison.
He remembers when the union was organized he broke the noses of two scabs and
loosened the nuts so the wheels came off six different wagons one morning, and he
came around and watched the ice melt in the street.
All he was sorry for was one of the scabs bit him on the knuckles of the right hand so
they bled when he came around to the saloon to tell the boys about it.

I Am The People, The Mob

I Am the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.


I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: 'The People,' with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.

Government


The Government -- I heard about the Government and
I went out to find it. I said I would look closely at
it when I saw it.
Then I saw a policeman dragging a drunken man to
the callaboose. It was the Government in action.
I saw a ward alderman slip into an office one morning
and talk with a judge. Later in the day the judge
dismissed a case against a pickpocket who was a
live ward worker for the alderman. Again I saw
this was the Government, doing things.
I saw militiamen level their rifles at a crowd of
workingmen who were trying to get other workingmen
to stay away from a shop where there was a strike
on. Government in action.
Everywhere I saw that Government is a thing made of
men, that Government has blood and bones, it is
many mouths whispering into many ears, sending
telegrams, aiming rifles, writing orders, saying
"yes" and "no."
Government dies as the men who form it die and are laid
away in their graves and the new Government that
comes after is human, made of heartbeats of blood,
ambitions, lusts, and money running through it all,
money paid and money taken, and money covered
up and spoken of with hushed voices.
A Government is just as secret and mysterious and sensitive
as any human sinner carrying a load of germs,
traditions and corpuscles handed down from
fathers and mothers away back.

Choices


They offer you many things,
I a few.
Moonlight on the play of fountains at night
With water sparkling a drowsy monotone,
Bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk
And a cross-play of loves and adulteries
And a fear of death
and a remembering of regrets:
All this they offer you.
I come with:
salt and bread
a terrible job of work
and tireless war;
Come and have now:
hunger.
danger
and hate.

Bronzes


I


The bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln
Park
Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr
by in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment
for dinner and matineés and buying and
selling
Though in the dusk and nightfall when high waves are
piling
On the slabs of the promenade along the lake shore near
by
I have seen the general dare the combers come closer
And make to ride his bronze horse out into the hoofs
and guns of the storm.


II


I cross Lincoln Park on a winter night when the snow
is falling.
Lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow,
his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the newsies
crying forty thousand men are dead along the
Yser, his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar
of the city at his bronze feet.
A lithe Indian on a bronze pony, Shakespeare seated with
long legs in bronze, Garibaldi in a bronze cape, they
hold places in the cold, lonely snow to-night on their
pedestals and so they will hold them past midnight
and into the dawn.

Chamfort


There's Chamfort. He’s a sample.
Locked himself in his library with a gun,
Shot off his nose and shot out his right eye.
And this Chamfort knew how to write
And thousands read his books on how to live,
But he himself didn’t know
How to die by force of his own hand—see?
They found him a red pool on the carpet
Cool as an April forenoon,
Talking and talking gay maxims and grim epigrams.
Well, he wore bandages over his nose and right eye,
Drank coffee and chatted many years
With men and women who loved him
Because he laughed and daily dared Death:
“Come and take me.”

Bricklayer Love

I thought of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer
and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store.


I don't care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I
used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons.


When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky and the
mortar boards go wrong, I think of you.

Blacklisted


Why shall I keep the old name?
What is a name anywhere anyway?
A name is a cheap thing all fathers and mothers leave each child:
A job is a job and I want to live, so
Why does God Almighty or anybody else care whether I take a new name to go by?

'Boes


I waited today for a freight train to pass.


Cattle cars with steers butting their horns against the
bars, went by.


And a half a dozen hoboes stood on bumpers between
cars.


Well, the cattle are respectable, I thought.


Every steer has its transportation paid for by the farmer
sending it to market,


While the hoboes are law-breakers in riding a railroad
train without a ticket.


It reminded me of ten days I spent in the Allegheny
County jail in Pittsburgh.


I got ten days even though I was a veteran of the
Spanish-American war.


Cooped in the same cell with me was an old man, a
bricklayer and a booze-fighter.


But it just happened he, too, was a veteran soldier, and
he had fought to preserve the Union and free the
niggers.


We were three in all, the other being a Lithuanian who
got drunk on pay day at the steel works and got to
fighting a policeman;


All the clothes he had was a shirt, pants and shoes-somebody
got his hat and coat and what money he
had left over when he got drunk.

Basket


speak, sir, and be wise.
Speak choosing your words, sir, like an old woman over a bushel of apples.

Aztec Mask

I wanted a man’s face looking into the jaws and throat of life
With something proud on his face, so proud no smash of the jaws,
No gulp of the throat leaves the face in the end
With anything else than the old proud look:
Even to the finish, dumped in the dust,
Lost among the used-up cinders,
This face, men would say, is a flash,
Is laid on bones taken from the ribs of the earth,
Ready for the hammers of changing, changing years,
Ready for the sleeping, sleeping years of silence.
Ready for the dust and fire and wind.
I wanted this face and I saw it today in an Aztec mask.
A cry out of storm and dark, a red yell and a purple prayer,
A beaten shape of ashes
waiting the sunrise or night,
something or nothing,
proud-mouthed,
proud-eyed gambler.

Ashurnatsirpal III

Three walls around the town of Tela when I came.
They expected everything of those walls;
Nobody in the town came out to kiss my feet.


I knocked the walls down, killed three thousand soldiers,
Took away cattle and sheep, took all the loot in sight,
And burned special captives.


Some of the soldiers—I cut off hands and feet.
Others—I cut off ears and fingers.
Some—I put out the eyes.
I made a pyramid of heads.
I strung heads on trees circling the town.


When I got through with it
There wasn’t much left of the town of Tela.

A.E.F.
There will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,
The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust.
A spider will make a silver string nest in the
darkest, warmest corner of it.
The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty.
And no hands will polish the gun, and it will hang on the wall.
Forefingers and thumbs will point casually toward it.
It will be spoken among half-forgotten, whished-to-be-forgotten things.
They will tell the spider: Go on, you're doing good work.

A Father To His Son

A father sees his son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
'Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum monotony
and guide him among sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
and left them dead years before burial:
the quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
has twisted good enough men
sometimes into dry thwarted worms.
Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.
Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use against other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.

A Million Young Work Men

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.
Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red
hands.
And oh, it would have been a great job of killing and a new and beautiful thing under
the sun if the million knew why they hacked and tore each other to death.
The kings are grinning, the Kaiser and the czar—they are alive riding in leather-seated
motor cars, and they have their women and roses for ease, and they eat fresh-poached
eggs for breakfast, new butter on toast, sitting in tall water-tight houses reading the
news of war.
I dreamed a million ghosts of the young workmen rose in their shirts all soaked in
crimson … and yelled:
God damn the grinning kings, God damn the kaiser and the czar.

Imitators


A boat came in; the cliff was baked;
The noisy boat-chain fell and clanked on
The sand-an iron rattle-snake,
A rattling rust among the plankton.


And two got out; and from the cliff
I felt like calling down, 'Forgive me,
But would you kindly throw yourselves
Apart or else into the river?


Your miming is without a fault-
Of course the seeker finds the fancied-
But stop this playing with the boat!
Your model on the cliff resents it.'