Death Snips Proud Men/Losses=Carl Sandburg Poems

Sandburg was 89 years old when he died of old age in 1967.  The day he died his strong voice went silent.  His cremated body is buried beneath a large rock in the yard of his childhood home in Galesburg, Illinois.  The house is "on 3rd Street, the 2nd house east of the Chicago Burlington and Quincy railroad tracks."  He grew up poor and became in life and icon of his time.

Death Snips Proud Men by Carl Sandburg

DEATH is stronger than all the governments because the governments are men and men die and then death laughs: Now you see ’em, now you don’t.

Death is stronger than all proud men and so death snips proud men on the nose, throws a pair of dice and says: Read ’em and weep.

Death sends a radiogram every day: When I want you I’ll drop in—and then one day he comes with a master-key and lets himself in and says: We’ll go now.

Death is a nurse mother with big arms: ’Twon’t hurt you at all; it’s your time now; you just need a long sleep, child; what have you had anyhow better than sleep?

LOSSES

I HAVE love
And a child,
A banjo
And shadows.
(Losses of God,
All will go
And one day
We will hold
Only the shadows.)