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Always The Mob
Carl Sandburg
Always The Mob
Jesus emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a
high rock and dropped off and down into the sea: a mob.
The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering fourfooted in the sunset mist to the
dark, they go one way, they hunt one sleep, they find one pocket of grass for all.
Karnak? Pyramids? Sphinx paws tall as a coolie? Tombs kept for kings and sacred
cows? A mob.
Young roast pigs and naked dancing girls of Belshazzar, the room where a thousand sat
guzzling when a hand wrote: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin? A mob.
The honeycomb of green that won the sun as the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh, flew to
its shape at the hands of a mob that followed the fingers of Nebuchadnezzar: a mob of
one hand and one plan.
Stones of a circle of hills at Athens, staircases of a mountain in Peru, scattered clans of
marble dragons in China: each a mob on the rim of a sunrise: hammers and wagons
have them now.
Locks and gates of Panama? The Union Pacific crossing deserts and tunneling
mountains? The Woolworth on land and the Titanic at sea? Lighthouses blinking a coast
line from Labrador to Key West? Pig iron bars piled on a barge whistling in a fog off
Sheboygan? A mob: hammers and wagons have them to-morrow.
The mob? A typhoon tearing loose an island from thousand-year moorings and
bastions, shooting a volcanic ash with a fire tongue that licks up cities and peoples.
Layers of worms eating rocks and forming loam and valley floors for potatoes, wheat,
watermelons.
The mob? A jag of lightning, a geyser, a gravel mass loosening…
The mob … kills or builds … the mob is Attila or Ghengis Khan, the mob is Napoleon,
Lincoln.
I am born in the mob—I die in the mob—the same goes for you—I don’t care who you
are.
I cross the sheets of fire in No Man’s land for you, my brother—I slip a steel tooth into
your throat, you my brother—I die for you and I kill you—It is a twisted and gnarled
thing, a crimson wool:
One more arch of stars,
In the night of our mist,
In the night of our tears.
Jesus emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a
high rock and dropped off and down into the sea: a mob.
The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering fourfooted in the sunset mist to the
dark, they go one way, they hunt one sleep, they find one pocket of grass for all.
Karnak? Pyramids? Sphinx paws tall as a coolie? Tombs kept for kings and sacred
cows? A mob.
Young roast pigs and naked dancing girls of Belshazzar, the room where a thousand sat
guzzling when a hand wrote: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin? A mob.
The honeycomb of green that won the sun as the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh, flew to
its shape at the hands of a mob that followed the fingers of Nebuchadnezzar: a mob of
one hand and one plan.
Stones of a circle of hills at Athens, staircases of a mountain in Peru, scattered clans of
marble dragons in China: each a mob on the rim of a sunrise: hammers and wagons
have them now.
Locks and gates of Panama? The Union Pacific crossing deserts and tunneling
mountains? The Woolworth on land and the Titanic at sea? Lighthouses blinking a coast
line from Labrador to Key West? Pig iron bars piled on a barge whistling in a fog off
Sheboygan? A mob: hammers and wagons have them to-morrow.
The mob? A typhoon tearing loose an island from thousand-year moorings and
bastions, shooting a volcanic ash with a fire tongue that licks up cities and peoples.
Layers of worms eating rocks and forming loam and valley floors for potatoes, wheat,
watermelons.
The mob? A jag of lightning, a geyser, a gravel mass loosening…
The mob … kills or builds … the mob is Attila or Ghengis Khan, the mob is Napoleon,
Lincoln.
I am born in the mob—I die in the mob—the same goes for you—I don’t care who you
are.
I cross the sheets of fire in No Man’s land for you, my brother—I slip a steel tooth into
your throat, you my brother—I die for you and I kill you—It is a twisted and gnarled
thing, a crimson wool:
One more arch of stars,
In the night of our mist,
In the night of our tears.