They broke the right arm first at the elbow, then the shoulder.

By now of course he had lost all memory of names, even his own.

And there are those like you and me and many many others

Who can never forget the Man with the Broken Fingers.

His will, his pride as a free man, shall go on.

His shadow moves and his sacred fingers speak.

He tells men there are a thousand writhing shattering deaths

Better to die one by one than to say yes yes yes

When the answer is no no no and death is welcome and death comes soon

And death is a quiet step into a sweet clean midnight.

August 23, 1942

Forgotten Wars

Be loose. Be easy. Be ready.

Forget the last war.

Forget the one before.

Forget the one yet to come.

Be loose and easy about the wars

whether they have been fought

or whether yet to be fought—

be ready to forget them.

Who was saying at high noon today:

“Is not each of them a forgotten war

after it is fought and over?

how and why it came forgotten?

how and what it cost forgotten?

and was he there at Iwo Jima, Okinawa

or places named Cassino, Anzio, the Bulge?

and saying now:

“Let the next war before it comes

and before it gets under way

and five or six days sees its finish

or fifty years sees it still going strong

—let it be now a forgotten war.

Be ready now to forget it.

Be loose, be easy now.

The next war goes over in a flash—or runs long.”

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work—

I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?

Where are we now?

I am the grass.

Let me work.

Portraits

. . . Reedy had encouraged Masters to read Epigrams from the Greek Anthology. Masters and Sandburg spoke of the book that spring [of 1914] on their walks and talks, and read and reread it. It prompted Sandburg to write “many early portrait poems,” according to Paula [Sandburg’s wife].

— PENELOPE NIVEN, from Carl Sandburg: A Biography

To a Poet*

You said I would go alone,

I would find my way.

But you were the strongest person I had known.

You were the morning wind, and you were stone.

You said: I know that you will go your way.

Whatever horse you want to ride is yours,

And night is yours, and the evening gleams, and day.

I can tell you nothing you have not known.

I said: I go with you; I am your own.

But I went alone.

Memoir of a Proud Boy

He lived on the wings of storm.

The ashes are in Chihuahua.

Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado