No More Learning

Toffile, if he were here, I don't believe
Could tell you why he ever cared himself. . . .

She hadn't found the finger-bone she wanted
Among the buttons poured out in her lap.

I verified the name next morning: Toffile;
The rural letter-box said Toffile Lajway.




A BROOK IN THE CITY


The farm house lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger-length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run--
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water.
But I wonder
If, from its being kept forever under,
These thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.




DESIGN


I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appal? --
If design govern in a thing so small.




CARL SANDBURG




AND SO TO-DAY


And so to-day--they lay him away--
the boy nobody knows the name of--
the buck private--the unknown soldier--
the doughboy who dug under and died
when they told him to--that's him.

Down Pennsylvania Avenue to-day the riders go,
men and boys riding horses, roses in their teeth,
stems of roses, rose leaf stalks, rose dark leaves--
the line of the green ends in a red rose flash.

Skeleton men and boys riding skeleton horses,
the rib bones shine, the rib bones curve,
shine with savage, elegant curves--
a jawbone runs with a long white slant,
a skull dome runs with a long white arch,
bone triangles click and rattle,
elbows, ankles, white line slants--
shining in the sun, past the White House,
past the Treasury Building, Army and Navy Buildings,
on to the mystic white Capitol Dome--
so they go down Pennsylvania Avenue to-day,
skeleton men and boys riding skeleton horses,
stems of roses in their teeth,
rose dark leaves at their white jaw slants--
and a horse laugh question nickers and whinnies,
moans with a whistle out of horse head teeth:
why? who? where?

("The big fish--eat the little fish--
the little fish--eat the shrimps--
and the shrimps--eat mud,"--
said a cadaverous man--with a black umbrella--
spotted with white polka dots--with a missing
ear--with a missing foot and arms--
with a missing sheath of muscles
singing to the silver sashes of the sun. )

And so to-day--they lay him away--
the boy nobody knows the name of--
the buck private--the unknown soldier--
the doughboy who dug under and died
when they told him to--that's him.

If he picked himself and said, "I am ready to die,"
if he gave his name and said, "My country, take me,"
then the baskets of roses to-day are for the Boy,
the flowers, the songs, the steamboat whistles,
the proclamations of the honorable orators,
they are all for the Boy--that's him.

If the government of the Republic picked him saying,
"You are wanted, your country takes you"--
if the Republic put a stethoscope to his heart
and looked at his teeth and tested his eyes and said,
"You are a citizen of the Republic and a sound
animal in all parts and functions--the Republic takes you"--
then to-day the baskets of flowers are all for the Republic,
the roses, the songs, the steamboat whistles,
the proclamations of the honorable orators--
they are all for the Republic.

And so to-day--they lay him away--
and an understanding goes--his long sleep shall be
under arms and arches near the Capitol Dome--
there is an authorization--he shall have tomb companions--
the martyred presidents of the Republic--
the buck private--the unknown soldier--that's him.