Analysis of Always The Mob
Carl Sandburg 1878 (Galesburg) – 1967 (Flat Rock)
Jesus emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a high rock and dropped off and down into the sea: a mob.
The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering fourfooted in the sunset mist to the dark, they go one way, they hunt one sleep, they find one pocket of grass for all.
Karnak? Pyramids? Sphinx paws tall as a coolie? Tombs kept for kings and sacred cows? A mob.
Young roast pigs and naked dancing girls of Belshazzar, the room where a thousand sat guzzling when a hand wrote: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin? A mob.
The honeycomb of green that won the sun as the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh, flew to its shape at the hands of a mob that followed the fingers of Nebuchadnezzar: a mob of one hand and one plan.
Stones of a circle of hills at Athens, staircases of a mountain in Peru, scattered clans of marble dragons in China: each a mob on the rim of a sunrise: hammers and wagons have them now.
Locks and gates of Panama? The Union Pacific crossing deserts and tunneling mountains? The Woolworth on land and the Titanic at sea? Lighthouses blinking a coast line from Labrador to Key West? Pig iron bars piled on a barge whistling in a fog off Sheboygan? A mob: hammers and wagons have them to-morrow.
The mob? A typhoon tearing loose an island from thousand-year moorings and bastions, shooting a volcanic ash with a fire tongue that licks up cities and peoples. Layers of worms eating rocks and forming loam and valley floors for potatoes, wheat, watermelons.
The mob? A jag of lightning, a geyser, a gravel mass loosening…
The mob … kills or builds … the mob is Attila or Ghengis Khan, the mob is Napoleon, Lincoln.
I am born in the mob—I die in the mob—the same goes for you—I don’t care who you are.
I cross the sheets of fire in No Man’s land for you, my brother—I slip a steel tooth into your throat, you my brother—I die for you and I kill you—It is a twisted and gnarled thing, a crimson wool:
One more arch of stars,
In the night of our mist,
In the night of our tears.
Scheme | A X A A X X X X X X X XXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101001011101101001101101101101010101 0110110101001001110111111111111101111 11001111011111010101 1110101011101101011001011111101 010111101101010110011111011011100101101111011 11010111101010100011011101001010110110110010111 101110010010101001001001110001011101001111011111011101100011010011001011110 01011011101101100101000101101011111001010111010101010110101100 01011100100101100 01111011010111011010010 1110011100101111111111 1101110011111110110110111111011110111110100110101 11111 0011101 0011101 |
Characters | 2,029 |
Words | 383 |
Sentences | 25 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 4 |
Lines Amount | 15 |
Letters per line (avg) | 104 |
Words per line (avg) | 25 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 131 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 32 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:55 min read
- 137 Views
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"Always The Mob" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 18 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4600/always-the-mob>.
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