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Neighbors

by Carl Sandburg, 1920

On Forty First Street
 near Eighth Avenue
 a frame house wobbles.

 If houses went on crutches
 this house would be
 one of the cripples.

 A sign on the house:
 Church of the Living God
 And Rescue Home for Orphan Children.

 From a Greek coffee house
 Across the street
 A cabalistic jargon
 Jabbers back.
   And men at tables
   Spill Peloponnesian syllables
   And speak of shovels for street work.
   And the new embankments of the Erie Railroad
   At Painted Post, Horse’s Head, Salamanca.

Published in Smoke and Steel
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