GRASS - Carl Sandburg

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.          5 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 the grass.   10             Let me work.  ==================================================================

IRON  GUNS, Long, steel guns, Pointed from the war ships In the name of the war god. Straight, shining, polished guns,         5 Clambered over with jackies in white blouses, Glory of tan faces, tousled hair, white teeth, Laughing lithe jackies in white blouses, Sitting on the guns singing war songs, war chanties. Shovels,         10 Broad, iron shovels, Scooping out oblong vaults, Loosening turf and leveling sod.     I ask you     To witness—         15     The shovel is brother to the gun. ====================================== POPPIES SHE loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.
In a loose white gown she walks
and a new child tugs at cords in her body.
Her head to the west at evening when the dew is creeping,
A shudder of gladness runs in her bones and torsal fiber:	5
She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.
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Another short extract: FOR the gladness here where the sun is shining at evening on the weeds at the river, Our prayer of thanks. For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and bareheaded in the summer grass, Our prayer of thanks. For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white arms that hold us,   Our prayer of thanks.         5    A member of the Chicago Group of the early 1900s, Sandburg found beauty and glory in the simple America that surrounded him: the farms, industry, landscape, culture, and most importantly, the American people. Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, writer, and editor who won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as "as a major figure in contemporary literature," especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed "unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life", and at his death in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America."    (Wikipedia)

Source:  http://www.bartleby.com/people/Sandburg.html