Poeticous Logo
en
English Español Français Italiano
Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg

Washerwoman

THE WASHERWOMAN is a member of the Salvation Army.  
And over the tub of suds rubbing underwear clean  
She sings that Jesus will wash her sins away  
And the red wrongs she has done God and man  
Shall be white as driven snow.    
Rubbing underwear she sings of the Last Great Washday.

Cornhuskers. 1918.

#Americans

Enjoyed this read? Treat us to a coffee!.
Your help allows us to exist.
Other works by Carl Sandburg...
Plaster

‘I KNEW a real man once,’ says… Did a man touch his lips to Agath… Agatha, far past forty in a splend…
Sea-Wash

The sea-wash never ends. The sea-wash repeats, repeats. Only old songs? Is that all the s… Only the old strong songs? Is that all?
Bath

A MAN saw the whole world as a g… cross-bones. The rose flesh of lif… faces. Nothing counts. Everything… dust and ashes to ashes and then a… useless silence. So he saw it all.…
Mag

I WISH to God I never saw you,… I wish you never quit your job and… I wish we never bought a license a… For you to get married in the day… And told him we would love each ot…
Jungheimer's

IN western fields of corn and nor… They talk about me, a saloon with… The soft red lights, the long curv… The leather seats and dim corners, Tall brass spittoons, a nigger cut…
Tangibles

(Washington, August, 1918)I HAV… I have seen this city in the night… And in the night and the moon I h… The float of the dome in the day a… The float of the dome in the night…
I Am the People, the Mob

I AM the people—the mob—the crowd… Do you know that all the great wor… done through me? I am the workingman, the inventor,… world’s food and clothes.
 1
Eleventh Avenue Racket

Mamie Riley married Jimmy Higgins last night: Eddie Jones died of whooping cough: George Hacks got a job on the police force: the Rosenheims bought a brass bed: Lena Hart giggled at a j...
Autumn Movement

I cried over beautiful things know… The field of cornflower yellow is… the mother of the year, the taker… The northwest wind comes and the y… come in the first spit of snow on…
Testament

I GIVE the undertakers permissio… to the graveyard and to lay away a… feet, the hands, all: I know there… over they can not put away. Let the nanny goats and the billy…
Jerry

Six years I worked in a knitting… And then I married Jerry, the ice… He weighed 240 pounds, and could h… Who weighed 105 pounds, outward ea… He came home drunk and lay on me w…
Whirls

NEITHER rose leaves gathered in… Cinders-these-hissing in a marl an…
Broken-Face Gargoyles

Though I can whisper to you I am looking for an undertaker humming a lullaby and throwing his feet in a swift and mystic buck-and-wing, now you see it and now you don’t. Fish to swim a ...
Fellow Citizens

I DRANK musty ale at the Illino… the millionaire manufacturer of Gr… one night And his face had the shining light… he spoke of a beautiful daughter,…
Flying Fish

I HAVE lived in many half-worlds… I leaned at a deck rail watching a… I leaned so... and you fluttered s… Child of water, child of air, fin…



Top