Five circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind rouge-red lips and powder-white face.
Sandburg gives us five obituaries in two lines. The newspapers report that five circus clowns have died in a year, and each one now lies flat while an undertaker positions his hands. That careful, final pose feels like an echo of the gestures they once used to make crowds roar.
Read the full summary