The People, Yes Read online

  Or the snuggle of a bearcub in mother paws

  Or the structural weave of the universe

  Witnessed in a moving frame of winter stars—

  These hold affidavits of struggle.

  14

  The people is Everyman, everybody.

  Everybody is you and me and all others.

  What everybody says is what we all say.

  And what is it we all say?

  Where did we get these languages?

  Why is your baby-talk deep in your blood?

  What is the cling of the tongue

  To what it heard with its mother-milk?

  They cross on the ether now.

  They travel on high frequencies

  Over the border-lines and barriers

  Of mountain ranges and oceans.

  When shall we all speak the same language?

  And do we want to have all the same language?

  Are we learning a few great signs and passwords?

  Why should Everyman be lost for words?

  The questions are put every day in every tongue:

  “Where you from, Stranger?

  Where were you born?

  Got any money?

  What do you work at?

  Where’s your passport?

  Who are your people?”

  Over the ether crash the languages.

  And the people listen.

  As on the plain of Howdeehow they listen.

  They want to hear.

  They will be told when the next war is ready.

  The long wars and the short wars will come on the air,

  How many got killed and how the war ended

  And who got what and the price paid

  And how there were tombs for the Unknown Soldier,

  The boy nobody knows the name of,

  The boy whose great fame is that of the masses,

  The millions of names too many to write on a tomb,

  The heroes, the cannonfodder, the living targets,

  The mutilated and sacred dead,

  The people, yes.

  Two countries with two flags

  are nevertheless one land, one blood, one people—

  can this be so?

  And the earth belongs to the family of man?

  can this be so?

  The first world war came and its cost was laid on the people.

  The second world war—the third—what will be the cost?

  And will it repay the people for what they pay?

  15

  From the people the countries get their armies.

  By the people the armies are fed, clothed, armed.

  Out of the smoke and ashes of the war

  The people build again their two countries with two flags

  Even though sometimes it is one land, one blood, one people.

  Hate is a vapor fixed and mixed.

  Hate is a vapor blown and thrown.

  And the war lasts till the hate dies down

  And the crazy Four Horsemen have handed the people

  Hunger and filth and a stink too heavy to stand.

  Then the earth sends forth bright new grass

  And the land begins to breathe easy again

  Though the hate of the people dies slow and hard.

  Hate is a lingering heavy swamp mist.

  And the bloated horse carcass points four feet to the sky

  And the tanks and caterpillar tractors are buried deep in shell holes

  And rust flakes the big guns and time rots the gas masks on skeleton faces:

  Deep in the dirt the dynamite threw them with an impersonal detonation: war is “Oh!” and “Ah!”: war is “Ugh!”

  And after the strife of war

  begins the strife of peace.

  16

  Hope is a tattered flag and a dream out of time.

  Hope is a heartspun word, the rainbow, the shadblow in white,

  The evening star inviolable over the coal mines,

  The shimmer of northern lights across a bitter winter night,

  The blue hills beyond the smoke of the steel works,

  The birds who go on singing to their mates in peace, war, peace,

  The ten-cent crocus bulb blooming in a used-car salesroom,

  The horseshoe over the door, the luckpiece in the pocket,

  The kiss and the comforting laugh and resolve—

  Hope is an echo, hope ties itself yonder, yonder.

  The spring grass showing itself where least expected,

  The rolling fluff of white clouds on a changeable sky,

  The broadcast of strings from Japan, bells from Moscow,

  Of the voice of the prime minister of Sweden carried

  Across the sea in behalf of a world family of nations

  And children singing chorals of the Christ child

  And Bach being broadcast from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

  And tall skyscrapers practically empty of tenants

  And the hands of strong men groping for handholds

  And the Salvation Army singing God loves us . . .

  17

  “The people is a myth, an abstraction.”

  And what myth would you put in place

  of the people?

  And what abstraction would you exchange

  for this one?

  And when has creative man not toiled

  deep in myth?

  And who fights for a bellyful only and

  where is any name worth remembering

  for anything else than the human

  abstraction woven through it with

  invisible thongs?

  “Precisely who and what is the people?”

  Is this far off from asking what is grass?

  what is salt? what is the sea? what is

  loam?

  What are seeds? what is a crop? why must

  mammals have milk soon as born or they

  perish?

  And how did that alfalfaland governor

  mean it: “The common people is a mule

  that will do anything you say except

  stay hitched”?

  18

  Let the nickels and dimes explain.

  They are made for the people.

  Millions every day study the buffalo on the nickel,

  Study the torch of liberty on the dime

  And the words “In God We Trust,”

  Study before spending the nickel, the dime,

  For a handkerchief, a mousetrap, a bowl of soup.

  These with their nickels and dimes

  Bring the street its roar and whirl,

  These in their wants and spending,

  These are the bottom pedestals of steel-ribbed skyscrapers.

  These are the buyers and payers whose mass flood of nickels

  and dimes is a life stream of a system.

  And how come the hey-you-

  -listen-to-this billboard, the you-can’t-

  -get-away-from-this electric sign, the

  show window robots and dummies, the loud-

  speaker clamor, the bargains brandished

  with slambang hoots and yells, nods and

  winks, gee-whizz sales?

  The liar in print who first lies to you

  about your health and then lies about

  what will fix it, the scare liar who hopes

  his lies will scare you into buying what

  he is lying about,

  The better-than-all-others liar, the easy-pay

  ments liar, the greatest-on-earth liar, the

  get-rich-quick liar

  Befouling words and mutilating language and

  feeding rubbish and filth to the human mind

  for the sake of sales, selling whatever can

  be sold for a profit—

  Out of this seething whirl, this merciless fight

  of the selling game, what happens to buyers

  and sellers? why does the question rise:

  “How can
you compete with a skunk?”

  The endless lines of women buying steel-wool dishrags are among the people, the customers, the mass buyers who pay

  For the barons and counts the American girl goes shopping for, trying one and another.

  “What is doing in dukes today and how much for a marquis a markee?” asks the chain store princess, the daughter of the railroad reorganization looter,

  While the shoppers and commuters who constitute their meal tickets pick the aisles amid frying pans, flannelette apparel, leatherette notions, genuine toys and imitation jewelry.

  Out of the needs of life and the wants of the people rises a jungle of tall possessions bewildering to its owners and their sons and daughters who step in when the will is read and say, “Now it’s ours.”

  From then on the bank and its branches appurtenant thereto, the mills and mines, the patents, the oil wells and pipe lines, the monopoly rights, the coast-to-coast chain of stores, belong to the new generation,

  To a daughter sometimes nothing special, just another cutie; to a son who knows neckties and chorines and wisecracks at parting, “Abyssinia.”

  Oat of this rigamarole come czars of definite domains, owners of control saying, “We don’t have to own it. What’s ownership anyhow if we hold control and the affiliates and subsidiaries of the main holding company are fixed our way?”

  19

  The people, yes, the people,

  Everyone who got a letter today

  And those the mail-carrier missed,

  The women at the cookstoves preparing meals,

  in a sewing corner mending, in a basement

  laundering, woman the homemaker,

  The women at the factory tending a stitching

  machine, some of them the mainstay of the

  jobless man at home cooking, laundering,

  Streetwalking jobhunters, walkers alive and keen,

  sleepwalkers drifting along, the stupefied and

  hopeless down-and-outs, the game fighters

  who will die fighting,

  Walkers reading signs and stopping to study

  windows, the signs and windows aimed

  straight at their eyes, their wants,

  Women in and out of doors to look and feel, to

  try on, to buy and take away, to order and

  have it charged and delivered, to pass by on

  account of price and conditions,

  The shopping crowds, the newspaper circulation,

  the bystanders who witness parades, who

  meet the boat, the train, who throng in

  wavelines to a fire, an explosion, an accident—

  The people, yes—

  Their shoe soles wearing holes in stone steps, their

  hands and gloves wearing soft niches in ban

  isters of granite, two worn foot-tracks at the

  general-delivery window,

  Driving their cars, stop and go, red light, green

  light, and the law of the traffic cop’s fingers,

  on their way, loans and mortgages, margins to

  cover,

  Payments on the car, the bungalow, the radio, the

  electric icebox, accumulated interest on loans

  for past payments, the writhing point of

  where the money will come from,

  Crime thrown in their eyes from every angle,

  crimes against property and person, crime in

  the prints and films, crime as a lurking

  shadow ready to spring into reality, crime as

  a method and a technic,

  Comedy as an offset to crime, the laughmakers,

  the odd numbers in the news and the movies,

  original clowns and imitators, and in the best

  you never know what’s coming next even

  when it’s hokum,

  And sports, how a muff in the seventh lost

  yesterday’s game and now they are learning to

  hit Dazzy’s fadeaway ball and did you hear

  how Foozly plowed through that line for a

  touchdown this afternoon?

  And daily the death toll of the speed wagons; a

  cripple a minute in fenders, wheels, steel and

  glass splinters; a stammering witness before a

  coroner’s jury, “It happened so sudden I

  don’t know what happened.”

  And in the air a decree: life is a gamble; take a

  chance; you pick a number and see what you

  get: anything can happen in this sweepstakes:

  around the corner may be prosperity or the

  worst depression yet: who knows? nobody:

  you pick a number, you draw a card, you

  shoot the bones.

  In the poolrooms the young hear, “Ashes to

  ashes, dust to dust, If the women don’t get

  you then the whiskey must,” and in the

  churches, “We walk by faith and not by sight,”

  Often among themselves in their sessions of candor

  the young saying, “Everything’s a racket,

  only the gyp artists get by.”

  And over and beyond the latest crime or comedy

  always that relentless meal ticket saying

  dont-lose-me, hold your job, glue your mind

  on that job or when your last nickel is gone

  you live on your folks or sign for relief,

  And the terror of these unknowns is a circle of

  black ghosts holding men and women in toil

  and danger, and sometimes shame, beyond

  the dreams of their blossom days, the days

  before they set out on their own.

  What is this “occupational disease” we hear

  about? It’s a sickness that breaks your health

  on account of the work you’re in. That’s all.

  Another kind of work and you’d have been

  as good as any of them. You’d have been

  your old self.

  And what is this “hazardous occupation”? Why

  that’s where you’re liable to break your neck

  or get smashed on the job so you’re no good

  on that job any more and that’s why you

  can’t get any regular life insurance so long as

  you’re on that job.

  These are heroes then—among the plain people—

  Heroes, did you say? And why not? They

  give all they’ve got and ask no questions and

  take what comes and what more do you

  want?

  On the street you can see them any time, some

  with jobs, some nothing doing, here a down-