The Man In The Street Is Fed

One of my favorite poems from one of my favorite poets.

The man in the street it fed 

with lies in peace, gas in war,

and he may live now

just around the corner from you

trying to sell

the only thing he has to sell,

the power of his hand and brain

to labor for wages, for pay,

for cash of the realm.

And there are no takers, he can't connect.

Maybe he says, "Some pretty good men are on the street."

Maybe he says, "I'm just a palooka... all washed up."

Maybe he's a wild kid ready for his first stickup.

Maybe he's bummed a thousand miles and has a diploma.

Maybe he can take whatever the police can hand him,

Too many of him saying in their own wild way,

"The worst they can give you is lead in the guts."

Whatever the wild kids want to do they'll do

And whoever gives them ideas, faiths, slogans,

Whoever touches the bottom flares of them,

Connects with something prouder than all deaths

For they can live on hard corn and like it.

They are the original sons of the wild jackass

Crowned and clothed with what the Unknown Soldier had

If he went to his fate in a pride over all deaths.

Give them a cause and they are a living dynamite.

They are the game fighters who will die fighting.

Here and there a man in the street

is young, hard as nails,

cold with questions he asks

from his burning insides.

Bred in a motorized world of trial and error

He measures by millionths of an inch,

Knows ball bearings from spiral gearings,

Chain transmission, heat treatment of steel,

Speeds and feeds of automatic screw machines,

Having handled electric tools

With pistol grip and trigger switch.

Yet he can't connect and he can name thousands

Like himself idle amid plants also idle.

He studies the matter of what is justice

And revises himself on money, comfort, good name.

He doesn't know what he wants

And says when he gets it he'll know it.

He asks, "Why is this what it is?"

He asks, "Who is paying for this propaganda?"

He asks, "who owns the earth and why?"

Here and there a wife or sweetheart sees with him

The pity of being sold down the river in a smoke

Of confusions taken from the mouths of the dead

And spoken as though those dead are alive now

And would say now what they said then.

"Let him go as far as he likes," says one lawyer who sits on several heavy directorates.

"What do we care? Is he any of our business? If he knew how he could manage.

"There are exceptional cases, but where there is poverty you will generally

find they were improvident and lacking it thrift and industry.

"The system of free competition we now have has made America the

greatest and richest country on th face of the globe.

"You will seek in vain for any land where so large a number of people

have had so many of the good things of life.

"The malcontents who stir up class feeling and engender class hatred are

the foremost enemies of our republic and its constitutional government."

And so on and so on in further confusions taken from the mouths of the dead and

spoken as though those dead are alive now and would say now what they said then.

Like the form of a seen and unheard prowler,

Like a slow and cruel violence,

is the known unspoken menace:

Do what we tell you or go hungry;

listen to us or don't eat.

He walks and walks and wonders why he built the road.

Once I built a railroad

... now ...

brother, can you spare a dime?

To his dry well a man carried

all the water he could carry,

primed the pump, drew out the water,

and now

he has all the water he can carry.

We asked the cyclone

to go around our barn

but it didn't hear us.

-Carl Sandburg