Why does God Almighty or anybody else care whether I take a new name to go by?

The Machine

The machine yes the machine

never wastes anybody’s time

never watches the foreman

never talks back

never talks what is right or wrong

never listens to others talking or if

it does listen it doesn’t hear

never says we’ve been thinking, or, our

feeling is like this

the machine yes the machine cuts your production cost

a man is a man and what can you do with him?

but a machine now you take a machine

no kids no woman never hungry never thirsty

all a machine needs is a little regular attention and plenty of grease.

Legal Midnight Hour

Well, the dying time came, the legal midnight hour,

The moment set by law for the Chair to be at work,

To substantiate the majesty of the State of Massachusetts

That hour was at hand, had arrived, was struck by the clocks,

The time for two men to be carried cool on a cooling board

Beyond the immeasurably thin walls between day and night,

Beyond the reach of airmail, telegrams, radiophones,

Beyond the brotherhoods of blood into the fraternities

Of mist and foggy dew, of stars and ice.

The time was on for two men

To march beyond blood into dust—

A time that comes to all men,

Some with a few loved ones at a bedside,

Some alone in the wilderness or the wide sea,

Some before a vast audience of all mankind.

Now Sacco saw the witnesses

As the straps were fitted on

Tying him down in the Chair—

And seeing the witnesses were

Respectable men and responsible citizens

And even though there had been no introductions,

Sacco said, “Good-evening, gentlemen.”

And before the last of the straps was fastened so to hold

Sacco murmured, “Farewell, mother.”

Then came Vanzetti.

He wished the vast audience of all mankind

To know something he carried in his breast.

This was the time to tell it.

He had to speak now or hold his peace forever.

The headgear was being clamped on.

The straps muffling his mouth were going on.

He shouted, “I wish to forgive some people

for what they are now doing.”

And so now

the dead are dead? ? ? ?

Love Poems

Love, is it a cat with claws and wild mate screams in the black night?

Love, l-o-v-e, is it a tug at the heart that comes high and costs, always costs, as long as you have it?

Love, is it a free glad spender, ready to spend to the limit and then go head over heels in debt?

Love, can it hit one without hitting two, and leave the one lost and groping?

— CARL SANDBURG, from The World of Carl Sandburg

Paula

Nothing else in this song—only your face.

Nothing else here—only your drinking, night-gray eyes.

The pier runs into the lake straight as a rifle barrel.

I stand on the pier and sing how I know you mornings.