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Carl Sandburg
I SAW a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran
over it. Its laugh was full of nails rattling. It
was a child's dream of a mouth.
A fist hit the mouth : knuckles of gun-metal driven by an
electric wrist and shoulder. It was a child's dream
of an arm.
The fist hit the mouth over and over, again and again.
The mouth bled melted iron, and laughed its laughter
of nails rattling.
And I saw the more the fist pounded the more the mouth
laughed. The fist is pounding and pounding, and
the mouth answering.
The single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose :
For we meet by one or the other.
I KNOW an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with
pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon icebox,
helps himself to cold ham and rye bread,
Tells the bartender it's hotter than yesterday and will be
hotter yet to-morrow, by Jesus,
And is on his way with his head in the air and a hard
pair of fists.
He spends a dollar or so every Saturday night on a two
hundred pound woman who washes dishes in the
Hotel Morrison.
He remembers when the union was organized he broke
the noses of two scabs and loosened the nuts so the
wheels came off six different wagons one morning,
and he came around and watched the ice melt in the
street.