Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Song of Industrial AmericaSherwood Anderson
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You remember, in the night, we arose. We were young. There was smoke in the passage and you laughed. Was it good—that black smoke? Look away—to the streams and the lake. We’re alive. See my hand, how it trembles on the rail.
You watch my hand on the rail of this bridge. I press down. The blood goes down, there. That steadies me; it makes me all right. Now here is how it’s going to come—the song, I mean. I’ve watched things, men and faces. I know.
First there are the broken things, myself and the others. I don’t mind that. I’m gone, shot to pieces. I’m a part of the scheme. I’m the broken end of a song myself. We are all that, here in the West, here in Chicago. Tongues clatter against teeth. There is nothing but shrill screams and a rattle. That had to be. It’s a part of the scheme.
Winter of song. Winter of song.
Pshaw, I’m steady enough—let me alone. Keokuk, Tennessee, Michigan, Chicago, Kalamazoo—don’t the names in this country make you fairly drunk? We’ll stand by this brown stream for hours. I’ll not be swept away—watch my hand, how steady it is. To catch this song and sing it would do much, make much clear.
Come close to me, warm little thing. It is night. I am cold. When I was a boy in my village, here in the West, I always knew all the old men. How sweet they were—quite biblical too—makers of wagons and harness and plows, sailors and soldiers and pioneers. We got Walt and Abraham out of that lot.
Then a change came.
Winter of song. Winter of song.
It crushed things down and down. Nobody wanted to hurt. They didn’t want to hurt me or you. They were caught themselves. I know the old men here—millionaires. I’ve always known old men all my life. I’m old myself. You would never guess how old I am.
I’ll tell you what it is—now you be still. To hell with you. I’m an old empty barrel floating in the stream—that’s what I am. You stand away. I’ve come to life. My arms lift up. I begin to swim.
Hell and damnation—turn me loose! The floods come on. That isn’t the roar of the trains at all. It’s the flood, the terrible, horrible flood turned loose.
Carried along. Carried along.
Little faint beginnings of things—old things dead, sweet old things—a life lived in Chicago, in the West, in the whirl of industrial America.
We have to sing, you see, here in the darkness. All men have to sing—poor broken things. We have to sing here in the darkness in the roaring flood. We have to find each other. Have you courage tonight for a song? Lift your voices. Come.