Page:Poems for Workers - ed. Manuel Gomez (1925).djvu/46

 Muckers

By CARL SANDBURG.

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 malnsmains [sic],

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." 44