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A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Bones

Carl Sandburg

Sling me under the sea.
Pack me down in the salt and wet.
No farmer’s plow shall touch my bones.
No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak
How jokes are gone and empty is my mouth.
Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes,
Purple fish play hide-and-seek,
And I shall be song of thunder, crash of sea,
Down on the floors of salt and wet.
          Sling me… under the sea.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Chicago Poems | Henry Holt & Company, 1916
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