Les plus lus ▸
Carl Sandburg
Take a hold now
On the silver handles here,
Six silver handles,
One for each of his old pals.
Take hold
And lift him down the stairs.
Put him on the rollers
Over the floor of the hearse.
Take him on the last haul,
To the cold straight house.
The level even house,
To the last house of all.
The dead say nothing
And the dead know much
And the dead hold under their tongues
A locked-up story.
in my will I mutter against money
but I will be dead and clean from top to toe
and laying out so much
on clothes for my close
as constant as doubt
the necessity of an everyday curse
though the devil must have patience
tomorrow is for ash and forgetting
and being a poet
he cannot stay an hour
‘Come’, said the black (why black?) flag,
Hanging limp from the pole, head bow’d,
‘Yes, this is the house of the departed’.
‘Behind me, lies my master inside the house’.
‘I’, thought the black flag,
‘The herald, the proclaimer,
The silent trumpeter of death,
Turning eyes opaque in sorrow’.
On either side of the pathway
Chairs, red, lined up
Waiting politely for the old,
Awaiting their turn.
‘Why couldn’t I been red? My master
Now swathed in red silk, the flowers
In bright red and yellow,
While I, in sombre black’.
beside the graves we speak
of new-born children
loudly, laughing where the dead
are deaf the living
clutching them in realms
too gross to hear them
heavy-hearted in warm spring
flowering gay brilliance
black limousines wind slowly
with their grave mourners past the
dark pines piled with
fresh flowers flowers
for life for transience for
beauty to tell of
the dead's latency
as living we walk pushing
No bowed heads,
you’re the only one
at your funeral.
Death sneaked up and took you,
my friend.
She found the door open,
and you lying there alone,
To the mill of hate
we had gone
grinding our tricks and our defamations
against each other.
Too many people had come to your funeral
my friend.
All of them downhearted, blubbering.
‘Why did you leave us, our friend?
Ah, man, you were too young to pass away.’
Friend,
if we really loved you that much
while you were still alive,
Not to dance with her
Was such a trivial thing
There were girls more fair than she,--
To-day
Ten girls dressed in white.
Each had a white rose wreath.
They made a dead man’s arch
And ten strong men
Carried a body through.
Not to dance with her
Was a trivial thing.
Bring to me then all passionate, crimson flowers
And lay them on my breast.
They shall be symbols of the love-lit hours —
And Love is best.
Folk who believe in Immortality,
Why should they pass in panoply of woe?
I would be linked with colour and ecstacy
That day I go.
Linked with glad dancers, their white limbs set free,
And rhythmical through veils of filmy green,
With children, rose-flushed with a mystic glee —
All these I mean
To leave as wishes for my funeral day.
But, lest I burden those I leave behind,
Let me add, hastily, that any way
They care to manage —
I asked if I got sick and died, would you
With my black funeral go walking too,
If you’d stand close to hear them talk or pray
While I’m let down in that steep bank of clay.
And, No, you said, for if you saw a crew
Of living idiots pressing round that new
Oak coffin--they alive, I dead beneath
That board--you’d rave and rend them with your teeth.
I went up and down the streets
Here and there by day and night,
Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.
Do you know why?
My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.
And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.
Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my
funeral,
And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.
But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able
To hold to the railing of the new life
When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree
At the grave,
Hiding herself, and her grief!