Long Guns

By Carl Sandburg

Then came Oscar, the time of the guns, 
And there was no land for a man, no land for a country,
      Unless guns sprang up
      And spoke their language.
The how of running the world was all in guns.

 The law of a God keeping sea and land apart,
The law of a child sucking milk,
The law of stars held together,
      They slept and worked in the heads of men
      Making twenty-mile guns, sixty-mile guns,
      Speaking their language
      Of no land for a man, no land for a country
      Unless… guns… unless… guns.

 There was a child wanted the moon shot off the sky,
      asking a long gun to get the moon,
      to conquer the insults of the moon,
      to conquer something, anything,
      to put it over and run up the flag,
To show them the running of the world was all in guns.

 There was a child wanted the moon shot off the day.
They dreamed… in the time of the guns… of guns

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Carl Sandburg was born on January 6, 1878, in Galesburg, Illinois. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Slabs of the Sunburst West (Harcourt, Brace, 1922) and Chicago Poems (Henry Holt, 1916). He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes in his lifetime, and died on July 22, 1967.

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“Long Guns” was published in the April/May 1919 issue of Others.  I received it this morning, the Poem-a-Day published by the American Academy of Poets.

The poem moved me as a parable of my country, these United States.  We confiscated  this country from the original inhabitants, the American Indians by means of guns.  We paused to slaughter each other from 1861 until spring of 1865, some of us wanting to enslave black people, and some to liberate them, —  with guns.  The logic of the gun has always enthralled us, is woven into the stories of our history, and of our psyche.

The gun is no longer a tool, — we have long since moved past the need to hunt to survive.  Guns are now totems, functioning symbols of our power which we use to kill wild animals for sport (just for fun), use to murder one another in abandoned inner city neighborhoods, and use to garrison the world with our military presence.  We have around 600 military bases abroad according to a 2013 Pentagon report.  We have enshrined the gun in our constitution with increasing bloody consequences.  We have an armed-up citizenry, armed-up to kill each other.

The last line of Sandburg’s poem speaking of a child’s dreams is truly chilling.