A Chicago poet named Eddy Two-Rivers has
flattered me on several occasions swearing that hearing me
perform this poem at the Green Mill inspired him to start
his writing career. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not.
One thing, though, is for sure: Carl Sandburg jump-upstarted
me. Lover, populist, Swede ... passionate eyeball scrutinizing
the world, he could be just as damn everything as everybody
else ... including careless. (That's where he connects to
me.)
But when there's a lot to get done, who's got enough
daylight to worry about how many Ps and Qs are in the soup?
So, don't fret, Carl, in the final decades of your century,
Marc's here to rewrite and re-speak what you didn't have
time to go over carefully.
Forgive me, Carl, for being so footloose with your words.
Once you were the Hog Butcher for the world.
Elmo from Dakota stuck those pigs
Because it was a job nobody wanted
And he had to take it.
The blood came over his heels
And the pigs squealed.
And every time a street car turned a corner
Those squeals came back to him.
Bloodthirsty men.
Hogs to kill.
Once the tools were made here.
Are they now?
Buy 'em at Sears.
Buy everything at Sears.
Buy the whole god damn world
And cram it all into a thirty foot lot.
Renovate it. Rejuvenate it.
Hire a Polish immigrant to point the bricks.
A Czech to polish the floors.
Make the tools with Japanese steel.
"Stacker of Wheat" he called you.
Well, it must move through here somewhere.
Piled onto a boxcar.
Piped down into a ship's hold.
Stored in a concrete silo.
But where?
Louie Gomez quit school at sixteen to shovel grain off the
slip docks of the Calumet Harbor. It was hard fuckin' work,
but he had to take it. Now, a Champaign Biz-Grad, who builds
his body with free weights and cleans his Caribbean suntan
at the health club sauna, trades stacks of wheat we never
see
making Louie's wages at sixteen (times) sixteen (times)
the
years of inflation (times) the tick tick seconds of a Market
that closes at midafternoon when and where Louis, now forty,
sweeps the floor.
Player with railroads, eh? Handler of freight.
There is no more romance to handle there now. No pride.
Just sleepy-eyed union stooges who walk the yards killing
time; pressing a button now and then. Robots, both mechanical
and in the flesh.
Half hour coffee at ten.
Gin mill at 12:15.
Timetable says:
a smoke at 2:20
punch the day's end ticket at a quarter to four
go home
eat the dinner
watch the TV
bawl at the kids
wake up
do it all again.
City of Big Business Ventures
(like riverboat gambling)
And routine subsistence
(like changing the sheets
in the big hotels).
They told him you were wicked, hooked pin. He saw painted
women under the glass lamps luring the farm boys. I see
hot
crack tricks prowling, almost naked on Dearborn, pulling
North Shore football heroes upstairs into fifty buck rooms
for thirty buck wipes of their runny noses.
And they said to him:
"You are crooked."
And CROOKED STILL YOU ARE!
Crooked at the top. Crooked in the middle. Crooked at the
bottom -- where maybe you should be crooked. Where maybe
there's an excuse for being crooked. Where gunmen still
kill
and go free to kill again for those at the crooked top.
For
those at the crooked middle, too moral to pull the triggers
themselves.
Brutal? You bet, you're brutal.
On the faces of women and children I've seen the worn mask
of brutality. And I've asked myself what's the use. What's
the use in turning to these old pages of pride and optimism.
What's the use in throwing back the sneer saying:
Come and show me another city with lifted head
singing so proud to be
alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling
job on job.
Here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against
the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog lapping for action,
Cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness;
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over its mouth,
laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing,
as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs
who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing
that under his wrist is the pulse,
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth,
half-naked, sweating, proud to be ... proud to be
... proud to be ....
What's the use in being so proud
when the things that change shouldn't
and the things that should stay fixed
in the blind imbalance of Liberty
that Hamlin ... Masters ...
and Sandburg saw so long ago?
Come show me now Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
Show me where we're going now. Show me our proud new destiny.
