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.

I Should Like to Be Hanged on a Summer Afternoon

I have often thought I should like to be hanged

On a summer afternoon in daylight, the sun shining and bands playing,

In a park or on a public square or a main street corner, everybody in town looking on and talking about it,

Newspaper extras spelling my name in tall headlines telling the town I am getting hanged.

And I smile to the sheriff and say he will be laughed at if the rope breaks

And he goes puttering, solemn, doing a duty under the law,

Feeling the ropes, searching corners, testing scantlings.

And before the cap is drawn over my head

And before my feet are tied for the straight drop,

When I am asked if I have any last word to say before I go to meet my God and Maker;

I speak in a cool, even voice, fixing my eyes maybe on some dark-eyed mother in the crowd, a grown dark-eyed daughter leaning against her.

I speak and say, “I am innocent and I am ready to meet my God face to face” . . .

I have often thought I should like to be hanged that way on a summer afternoon in daylight, the sun shining and bands playing.

Poetry Definitions

Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

— CARL SANDBURG, No. 36 from “Tentative (First Model) Definitions of Poetry,” in Good Morning, America

Tentative (First Model) Definitions of Poetry

1Poetry is a projection across silence of cadences arranged to break that silence with definite intentions of echoes, syllables, wave lengths.

2Poetry is an art practised with the terribly plastic material of human language.

3Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say, ‘Listen!’ and ‘Did you see it?’ ‘Did you hear it? What was it?’

4Poetry is the tracing of the trajectories of a finite sound to the infinite points of its echoes.

5Poetry is a sequence of dots and dashes, spelling depths, crypts, crosslights, and moon wisps.

6Poetry is a puppet-show, where riders of skyrockets and divers of sea fathoms gossip about the sixth sense and the fourth dimension.