Killers
I am singing to youSoft as a man with a dead child speaks;Hard as a man in handcuffs,Held where he cannot move:
Under the sunAre sixteen million men,Chosen for shining teeth,Sharp eyes, hard legs,And a running of young warm blood in their wrists.
And a red juice runs on the green grass;And a red juice soaks the dark soil.And the sixteen million are killing . . . and killing and killing.
I never forget them day or night:They beat on my head for memory of them;They pound on my heart and I cry back to them,To their homes and women, dreams and games.
I wake in the night and smell the trenches,And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines—Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark:Some of them long sleepers for always,Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always,Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak,Eating and drinking, toiling ... on a long job of killing.Sixteen million men.
Words in this poem
- heartbreak n.
- Crushing sorrow or grief; a yielding to such grief.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Killers is in the public domain. This text is taken from Chicago Poems, Wikisource; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Carl Sandburg, Killers, in Chicago Poems (1916), text of Wikisource, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sandburg-chicago-poems/killers.html, id L28916.
Form and metre
Killers is 24 lines in 5 stanzas.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 4 -AA- night · themA · themA · games
- 5 A--AA--- trenchesA · lines · dark · alwaysA · alwaysA · heartbreak · killing · men
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I am singing to you | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| Soft as a man with a dead child speaks; | 9 | ········· |
| Hard as a man in handcuffs, | 7 | ·····/· |
| Held where he cannot move: | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Under the sun | 4 | ···· |
| Are sixteen million men, | 6 | ·˘//˘· |
| Chosen for shining teeth, | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| Sharp eyes, hard legs, | 4 | ···· |
| And a running of young warm blood in their wrists. | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| And a red juice runs on the green grass; | 9 | ········· |
| And a red juice soaks the dark soil. | 8 | ········ |
| And the sixteen million are killing . . . and killing and killing. | 15 | ··˘//˘·/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| I never forget them day or night: | 9 | ·/˘˘/···· |
| They beat on my head for memory of them; | 11 | ······/˘˘·· |
| They pound on my heart and I cry back to them, | 11 | ··········· |
| To their homes and women, dreams and games. | 9 | ····/˘··· |
| I wake in the night and smell the trenches, | 10 | ········/˘ |
| And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines— | 10 | ······/˘·· |
| Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark: | 12 | ˘//˘/˘·/˘··· |
| Some of them long sleepers for always, | 9 | ····/˘·/· |
| Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always, | 14 | ···/˘˘···/˘·/· |
| Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak, | 9 | ·······/· |
| Eating and drinking, toiling ... on a long job of killing. | 14 | /˘·/˘/˘·····/˘ |
| Sixteen million men. | 5 | ˘//˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.