Cool Tombs...by Carl Sandburg

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? ... in the dust, in the cool tombs?

Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns ... tell me if the lovers are losers ... tell me if any get more than the lovers ... in the dust ... in the cool tombs. 

 

 

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This morning working in the garden I was thinking about this poem.  I love its gentle pondering rhythm.  It starts out almost brutal--"shoveled into the tombs"--but it isn't a brutal poem.  And in the quietness of the tombs, the brusqueness doesn't matter, just as the other conflicts and violence don't matter any more.