THERE is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice.  She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the…

Smash down the cities.Knock the walls to pieces.Break the factories and cathedrals, warehouses     and homesInto loose piles of stone and lumber and black     burnt wood:     You are the soldiers and…

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 GettysburgAnd pile them high…

JOY … weaving two violet petals for a coat lapel … painting on a slab of night sky a Christ face … slipping new brass keys into rusty iron locks…

THE WASHERWOMAN is a member of the Salvation Army.And over the tub of suds rubbing underwear cleanShe sings that Jesus will wash her sins awayAnd the red wrongs she has…

Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the     workmen are beginning the fence.The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that     can stab the…

The lawyers, Bob, know too much.They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.They know it all, what a dead hand wrote,A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling,The…

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs,  he forgot the copperheads and the assassin…  in the dust, in the cool tombs. And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and…

Let a joy keep you.Reach out your handsAnd take it when it runs by,As the Apache dancerClutches his woman.I have seen themLive long and laugh loud,Sent on singing, singing,Smashed to…

BURY this old Illinois farmer with respect.He slept the Illinois nights of his life after days of work in Illinois cornfields.Now he goes on a long sleep.The wind he listened…