The Song and the Slogan Lyrics
Text from Carl Sandburg’s “Prairie,” “The Road and the End,” “My People” and “The Journey and the Oath”
I was born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise
or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.
The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night I rest easy in the prairie arms, on the prairie heart.
After the sunburn of the day
handling a pitchfork at a hayrack
after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
the pearl-gray haystacks
in the gloaming
are cool prayers
to the harvest hands.
A thousand red men cried, and went away
A million white men came and put up sky-scrapers, threw out rails and wires,
Now the smokestacks bite the skyline with stub teeth
I am here when the cities are gone.
I am here before the cities come.
I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron.
I am dust of men.
I am dust of your dust, as I am brother and mother
To the copper faces, the worker in flint and clay,
The singing women and their sons a thousand years ago
Marching single file the timber and the plain.
I hold the dust of these amid changing stars.
I last while old wars are fought, while peace broods mother-like,
While new wars arise and the fresh killings of young men.
I fed the boys who went to France in the great dark days.
Appomattox is a beautiful word to me and so is Valley Forge and the Marne and Verdun,
I who have seen the red births and the red deaths
Of sons and daughters, I take peace or war, I say nothing and wait.
Rivers cut a path on flat lands.
The mountains stand up.
The salt oceans press in
And push on the coast lines.
The sun, the wind bring rain
And I know what the rainbow writes across the east or west in a
half-circle:
A love-letter pledge to come again.
My people are gray
pigeon gray, dawn gray, storm gray. I call them beautiful,
and I wonder where they are going.
I am the prairie, mother of men, waiting.
They are mine, the threshing crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to the railroad cattle pens.
They are mine, the crowds of people at a Fourth of July basket picnic, listening to a lawyer read the Declaration of Independence, watching the pinwheels and Roman candles at night, the young men and women two by two hunting the bypaths and kissing-bridges.
They are mine, the horses looking over a fence in the frost of late October saying good morning to the horses hauling wagons of rutabaga to market.
They are mine, the old zigzag rail fences, the new barbwire.
O prairie mother, I am one of your boys.
I have loved the prairie as a man with a heart shot full of pain over love.
Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water.
I speak of new cities and new people.
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down, a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world only an ocean of tomorrows, a sky of tomorrows.
I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say at sundown: Tomorrow is a day.
I shall foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.
I shall foot it
In the silence of the morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.
The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain.
The dust of the traveled road
Shall touch my hands and face
By God, I’ll go as a Man
When my time comes I’ll be ready
I shall keep the faith that nothing
Is impossible with man, that one
Or two illusions are as good as Money.
By God, I’ll fight for Man
As against famine, flood, storm
As against crop gambling, job gambling,
As against bootlickers on the left hand,
As against bloodsuckers on the right hand,
As against their cannibalism of the
Exploitation of man by man,
As against insecurity of the sanctities of human life.
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