Chicago Poems/The Shovel Man

by Carl Sandburg

 

THE SHOVEL MAN

On the street

Slung on his shoulder is a handle half way across,
Tied in a big knot on the scoop of cast iron
Are the overalls faded from sun and rain in the ditches;
Spatter of dry clay sticking yellow on his left sleeve

And a flimsy shirt open at the throat,

I know him for a shovel man,

A dago working for a dollar six bits a day

And a dark-eyed woman in the old country dreams of him for one of the world's ready men with a pair of fresh lips and a kiss better than all the wild grapes that ever grew in Tuscany.