TIME AND THE DEAD

Poem for Today - May 7, 2014

GRASS

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 Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am grass.
Let me work.

© Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Painting on top: The Veteran

in a New Field (1865), by 

Winslow Homer (1836-1910)

This painting was finished a

few months after the end of

the Civil War with the  signing 

of the surrender at Appomattox.