By Sandburg, Carl
From Chicago Poems, 1916. “A MAN saw the whole world as a grinning skull and cross-bones.”
A MAN saw the whole world as a grinning skull and cross-bones. The rose flesh of life shriveled from all faces. Nothing counts.
Everything is a fake. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a useless silence. So he saw it all. Then
he went to a Mischa Elman concert. Two hours waves of sound beat on his eardrums. Music washed something or other inside him.
Music broke down and rebuilt something or other in his head and heart. He joined in five encores for the young Russian Jew
with the fiddle. When he got outside his heels hit the sidewalk a new way. He was the same man in the same world as before.
Only there was a singing fire and a climb of roses everlastingly over the world he looked on.
. . . . .
Submitted by Abra M., who describes the poem as “Bitter bitter bitter and THEN...”
PEEK
Ftrain.com is the website of Paul Ford and his pseudonyms. It is showing its age. I'm rewriting the code but it's taking some
time.
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About the author: I've been running this website from 1997. For a living I write stories and essays, program computers, edit
things, and help people launch online publications. (LinkedIn). I wrote a novel. I was an editor at Harper's Magazine for five years; then I was a Contributing Editor; now I am a free agent. I was also on NPR's All Things Considered for a while. I still write for The Morning News, and some other places.
If you have any questions for me, I am very accessible by email. You can email me at ford@ftrain.com and ask me things and I will try to answer. Especially if you want to clarify something or write something critical. I am
glad to clarify things so that you can disagree more effectively.
POKE
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© 1974-2011 Paul Ford
Recent
@20, by Paul Ford.
Not any kind of eulogy, thanks. And no header image, either.
(October 15)
Recent Offsite Work: Code and Prose.
As a hobby I write.
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Rotary Dial.
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10 Timeframes.
(June 20)
Facebook and Instagram: When Your Favorite App Sells Out.
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Why I Am Leaving the People of the Red Valley.
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Welcome to the Company.
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(May 17)
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0h30m w/Photoshop, by Paul Ford.
It's immediately clear to me now that I'm writing again that I need to come up with some new forms in order to have fun here—so
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(1) When robots write history we can get in trouble with our past selves. (2) Search-generated, "false" chrestomathies and
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(May 5)
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