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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE RIGHT TO GRIEF, by CARL SANDBURG Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow, Last Line: With a broom. Variant Title(s): The Right To Grief; To Certain Poets About To Die Subject(s): Death; Dead, The | |||
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 of 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 bandanas 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. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A FRIEND KILLED IN THE WAR by ANTHONY HECHT FOR JAMES MERRILL: AN ADIEU by ANTHONY HECHT TARANTULA: OR THE DANCE OF DEATH by ANTHONY HECHT CHAMPS D?ÇÖHONNEUR by ERNEST HEMINGWAY |
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