SOMETIMES - SOME 

THINGS COME IN THREES

Poem for Today - March 20, 2014

THREES

I was a boy when I heard three red words

a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets

for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity – I asked

why men die for words.

I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns,

lilacs, told me the high golden words are:

Mother, Home, and Heaven – other older men

with face decorations said: God, Duty, Immortality

- they sang these threes slow from deep lungs.

Years ticked off their say-so on the great clocks

of doom and damnation, soup and nuts: meteors flashed

their say-so: and out of great Russia came three

dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die

for: Bread, Peace, Land.

And I met a marine of the U.S.A., a leatherneck 

              with a girl on

his knee for a memory in ports circling the earth 

              and he said:

Tell me how to say three things and I’ll always 

              get by – gimme

a plate of ham and eggs – how much? – and – 

              do you love me,
kid?

 ©  Carl Sandberg,

Harvest Poems,

1910-1960,

pages 61-62