KILLERS

Carl Sandburg

Solo 1: I am singing to you

Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;

All: Hard as a man in handcuffs,

Held where he cannot move.

Solo 1: 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.

All: And a red juice runs on the green grass;

And a red juice soaks the dark soil.

Solo 1: And the sixteen million are killing…

and killing and killing

I never forget them day or night.

They beat on my head from memory of them.

They pound on my heart and I cry back to them,

All: To their homes and women, dreams, and games.

Solo 1: I wake in the night and smell the trenches,

And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines—

All: Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark

Solo 1: Some of them long sleepers for always

Some of them tumbling to sleep tomorrow for always,

All: Fixed in the drag of the world’s heartbreak

Solo 1: Eating and drinking, toiling, on a long job

of killing!

All: Sixteen million men.