I AM singing to you Soft as a man with a dead child speaks; Hard as a man in handcuffs, Held where he cannot move: Under the sun Are sixteen million men, Chosen for shining teeth, Sharp eyes, hard legs, And a running of young warm blood in their wrists. And a red juice runs on the green grass; And a red juice soaks the dark soil. And the sixteen million are killing . . . and killing and killing. I never forget them day or night: They beat on my head for memory of them; They pound on my heart and I cry back to them, To their homes and women, dreams and games. I wake in the night and smell the trenches, And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines -- Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark: Some of them long sleepers for always, Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always, Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak, Eating and drinking, toiling . . . on a long job of killing. Sixteen million men. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AN EXPATIATION ON THE COMBINING OF WEATHERS AT THIRTY .... by HAYDEN CARRUTH THE SMALL SELF AND THE LIBERAL SELF by JAMES GALVIN CHAMBER MUSIC: 14 by JAMES JOYCE ON A TUFT OF GRASS by EMMA LAZARUS GUNS AS KEYS: AND THE GREAT GATE SWINGS by AMY LOWELL SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: THE VILLAGE ATHEIST by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |