Bones
Bones - context Summary
Chicago Poems, 1916
Published in Sandburg’s 1916 collection Chicago Poems, "Bones" imagines a speaker who demands burial beneath the sea rather than a conventional, land grave. The poem rejects agrarian or theatrical traditions (No farmer's plow
, No Hamlet
) and envisions marine scavengers and crashing surf as the speaker’s final music. Its stark, elemental images insist on a natural, submerged ending rather than cultural ritual.
Sling me under the sea. Pack me down in the salt and wet. No farmer's plow shall touch my bones. No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak How jokes are gone and empty is my mouth. Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes, Purple fish play hide-and-seek, And I shall be song of thunder, crash of sea, Down on the floors of salt and wet. Sling me . . . under the sea.
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