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Chicago Illinois - The Windy City
Modern-day photographs of the great City of Chicago, free for noncommercial
use.
Subjects include selected shots from points of interest in the
suburbs as well.
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Our Chicago pictures are free
for noncommercial use. Please select a thumbnail for larger
images and more information. |
Chicago by Carl
Sandburg
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker,
Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s
Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of
the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I
believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the
gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are
crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman
kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are
brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I
have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having
answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my
city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so
proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job,
here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little
soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for
action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke,
dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man
laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who
has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that
under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart
of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky,
brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to
be Hog Butcher,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player
with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.
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