| Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916. |
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| 67. Killers |
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| 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: | |
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| Under the sun | 5 |
| Are sixteen million men, | |
| Chosen for shining teeth, | |
| Sharp eyes, hard legs, | |
| And a running of young warm blood in their wrists. | |
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| And a red juice runs on the green grass; | 10 |
| And a red juice soaks the dark soil. | |
| And the sixteen million are killing … and killing and killing. | |
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| 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, | 15 |
| To their homes and women, dreams and games. | |
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| 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, | 20 |
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| 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. | |
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