| Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Cornhuskers. 1918. |
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| 75. Mammy Hums |
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| THIS is the song I rested with: | |
| The right shoulder of a strong man I leaned on. | |
| The face of the rain that drizzled on the short neck of a canal boat. | |
| The eyes of a child who slept while death went over and under. | |
| The petals of peony pink that fluttered in a shot of wind come and gone. | 5 |
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| This is the song I rested with: | |
| Head, heels, and fingers rocked to the nigger mammy humming of it, to the mile-off steamboat landing whistle of it. | |
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| The murmurs run with bees’ wings | |
| in a late summer sun. | |
| They go and come with white surf | 10 |
| slamming on a beach all day. | |
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| Get this. | |
| And then you may sleep with a late afternoon slumber sun. | |
| Then you may slip your head in an elbow knowing nothing—only sleep. | |
| If so you sleep in the house of our song, | 15 |
| If so you sleep under the apple trees of our song, | |
| Then the face of sleep must be the one face you were looking for. | |
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