Chicago Poems/Muckers

by Carl Sandburg

 

MUCKERS

Twenty men stand watching the muckers.

Stabbing the sides of the ditch

Where clay gleams yellow,

Driving the blades of their shovels

Deeper and deeper for the new gas mains,

Wiping sweat off their faces

With red bandanas.

The muckers work on . . pausing . . to pull
Their boots out of suckholes where they slosh.

Of the twenty looking on
Ten murmur, "O, it's a hell of a job,"
Ten others, "Jesus, I wish I had the job."