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Home  »  Chicago Poems  »  13. The Shovel Man

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916.

13. The Shovel Man

ON the street

Slung on his shoulder is a handle half way across,

Tied in a big knot on the scoop of cast iron

Are the overalls faded from sun and rain in the ditches;

Spatter of dry clay sticking yellow on his left sleeve

And a flimsy shirt open at the throat,

I know him for a shovel man,

A dago working for a dollar six bits a day

And a dark-eyed woman in the old country dreams of him for one of the world’s ready men with a pair of fresh lips and a kiss better than all the wild grapes that ever grew in Tuscany.