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Carl Sandburg - The Right To GriefCarl Sandburg - The Right To Grief
Work rating: Medium


To Certain Poets About to Die Take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow, Over the dead child of a millionaire, And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank Which the millionaire might order his secretary to     scratch off And get cashed.     Very well, You for your grief and I for mine. Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to. I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyards hunky. His job is sweeping blood off the floor. He gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works And it`s many tubs of blood he shoves out with a broom     day by day. Now his three year old daughter Is in a white coffin that cost him a week`s wages. Every Saturday night he will pay the undertaker fifty     cents till the debt is wiped out. The hunky and his wife and the kids Cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the white box. They remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor bills. They are glad it is gone for the rest of the family now     will have more to eat and wear. Yet before the majesty of Death they cry around the coffin And wipe their eyes with red bandannas and sob when     the priest says, "God have mercy on us all." I have a right to feel my throat choke about this. You take your grief and I mine—see? To-morrow there is no funeral and the hunky goes back     to his job sweeping blood off the floor at a dollar     seventy cents a day. All he does all day long is keep on shoving hog blood     ahead of him with a broom.
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