Grass: A Poem for Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, and as is my custom I share a poem for that day. I last shared this poem in 2016; it’s time to do so again, I think.

Grass
By Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.