Movement 1
Out of the window.....prairielands
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Interior
In the cool of the night time
Mutters "You" and "You"
The clocks pick off the points
To things hidden
And the mainsprings loosen.
In the cool of the night time,
They will need winding.
In Rabelais, Whitman, Hugo,
One of these days
In an oblong of moon mist.
they will need winding.
Out of the window . . . .
prairielands.
Rabelais in red boards,
Moon mist whitens a golf ground.
Walt Whitman in green,
Whiter yet is a limestone quarry.
Hugo in ten-cent paper covers,
The crickets keep on chirring.
Here they stand on shelves
Switch engines of the Great Western
In the cool of the night time
Sidetrack box cars, make up trains
And there is nothing....
For Weehawken, Oskaloosa, Saskatchewan;
To be said against them....
The cattle, the coal, the corn, must go
Or for them....
In the night .... on the prairielands.
In the cool of the night time
Chuff-chuff go the pulses.
And the docks.
They beat in the cool of the night time.
A man in pigeon-gray pajamas.
Chuff-chuff and chuff-chuff ....
The open window begins at his feet
These heartbeats travel the night a mile
And goes taller than his head.
And touch the moon silver at the window
Eight feet high is the pattern.
And the hones of the man.
Moon and mist make an oblong layout.
It costs nothing.
Silver at the man's bare feet.
Rabelais in red boards,
He swings one foot in a moon silver.
Whitman in green,
And it costs nothing.
Hugo in ten-cent paper covers,
One more day of bread and work.
Here they stand on shelves
One more day....so much rags.
In the cool of the night time
The man barefoot in moon silver
And the clocks.
- from Cornhuskers (1918) Carl Sandburg
Movement II
Why does a hearse horse snicker hauling a lawyer away?
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The Lawyers Know Too Much
The lawyers, Bob, know too much.
They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.
They know it all, what a dead hand wrote,
A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling,
The bones of the fingers a thin white ash.
The lawyers know
a dead man's thought too well.
In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob,
Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers,
Too many hereinbefore provided whereas,
Too many doors to go in and out of.
When the lawyers are through
What is there left, Bob?
Can a mouse nibble at it
And find it enough to fasten a tooth in?
Why is there always a secret singing
When a lawyer cashes in?
Why does a hearse
horse snicker
Hauling a lawyer away?
The work of the bricklayer goes to the blue.
The knack of a mason outlasts a moon.
The hands of a plasterer hold a room together.
The land of a farmer wishes him back again.
Singers of songs and dreamers of plays
Build a house no wind blows over.
The lawyers --tell me why a hearse horse snickers
hauling a lawyer's bones.
Carl Sandburg
Movement III
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly, Click
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Lost
Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor's breast
And the harbor's eyes.
- from Chicago Poems (1916) Carl Sandburg
Movement IV
The cartoonists weep in their beer.
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Honky Tonk in Cleveland, Ohio
It's a jazz affair, drum clashes and coronet
razzes.
The trombone pony neighs and the tuba jackass snorts.
The banjo tickles and titters too awful.
The chippies talk about the funnies in the papers.
The cartoonists weep in
their beer.
Shop riveters talk with their feet
To the feet of floozies under the tables.
A quartet of white hopes mourn with interspersed snickers:
"I got the blues.
I got the blues.
I got the blues."
And . . . as we said earlier:
The cartoonists weep in their beer.
from Smoke and Steel (1920) Carl Sandburg
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