Jazz Fantasia, poem by Carl Sandburg with art by Henri Matisse

JAZZ FANTASIA
by Carl Sandburg

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjoes,
sob on the long cool winding saxophones.
Go to it, O jazzmen.
 
Sling your knuckles on the bottoms of the happy
tin pans, let your trombones ooze, and go husha-
husha-hush with the slippery sand-paper.
 
Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome treetops,
moan soft like you wanted somebody terrible, cry like a
racing car slipping away from a motorcycle cop, bang-bang!
you jazzmen, bang altogether drums, traps, banjoes, horns,
tin cans — make two people fight on the top of a stairway
and scratch each other’s eyes in a clinch tumbling down
the stairs.
 
Can the rough stuff…now a Mississippi steamboat pushes
up the night river with a hoo-hoo-hoo-oo…and the green
lanterns calling to the high soft stars …a red moon rides
on the humps of the low river hills….go to it, O jazzmen.

Illustration: “Icarus” from Jazz, a book of 100 prints based on paper cutouts by Henri Matisse published in 1947. Copies available at Amazon.com.