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Choices

by Carl Sandburg, 1916

They offer you many things,
     I a few.
 Moonlight on the play of fountains at night
 With water sparkling a drowsy monotone,
 Bare-shouldered, smiling women and talk
 And a cross-play of loves and adulteries
 And a fear of death
                 and a remembering of regrets:
 All this they offer you.
 I come with:
     salt and bread
     a terrible job of work
     and tireless war;
 Come and have now:
     hunger.
     danger
     and hate.

Published in Chicago Poems
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