PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
Notes
Austerlitz: a village, now named Slavkov, where on Dec. 2, 1805,
Napoleon led an outnumbered French army to victory over Austrian and Russian forces.
Waterloo: Napoleon's final defeat, near this town in Belgium on June 18, 1815, by a European coalition including Austria, Great Britain, Prussia and Russia.
Gettysberg: a decisive victory by the Union army in the American civil war was won near this Pennsylvania town July 1-3, 1863.
Ypres: a town in Belgium at which three battles were fought in World War I (1914, 1915, and 1917) resulting in over 600,000 casualties
Verdun: during most of 1916 the Allied and German armies fought over this French town and castle, the battles ending indecisively with nearly 700,000 casualties.
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Comments
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He speaks as if he is the Grass above the souls that have died in great wars. Sounds like an awfully solemn piece.
Not much else to say. A good piece written by Sandburg. -
Each summer when I visit Verdun, Ypres and the Waterloo area this poem sounds in my head like some strange mantra as I see the grass as an equilizer of human atrocities.
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