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Fight

by Carl Sandburg, 1916

Red drips from my chin where I have been eating.
 Not all the blood, nowhere near all, is wiped off my mouth.

 Clots of red mess my hair
 And the tiger, the buffalo, know how.

 I was a killer.
         Yes, I am a killer.

 I come from killing.
         I go to more.
 I drive red joy ahead of me from killing.
 Red gluts and red hungers run in the smears and juices of my inside bones:
 The child cries for a suck mother and I cry for war.

Published in Chicago Poems
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