Chants and Litanies of Carl Sandburg

Bees and a honeycornb in the dried head
  of a horse in a pasture corner -- a skull
  in the tall grass and a buzz and a buzz
  of the yellow honey-hunters. 

And I ask no better [a] winding sheet
  (over the earth and under the sun). 

Let the bees go honey-hunting with yellow
  blur of wings in the dome of my head, 
  in the rumbling, singing arch of my skull. 

Let there be wings and yellow dust and the
  drone of dreams of honey -- who loses
  and remembers? -- who keeps and
  forgets? 

In a blue sheen of moon over the bones
  and under the hanging honey comb 
  the bees come home and the bees sleep.

When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot 
the copperheads and the assassin ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.	
 
And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, 
cash and collateral turned ashes ... in the dust, in the cool tombs.	
 
Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November
or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? ... 
in the dust, in the cool tombs?	
 
Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, 
cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns ...
tell me if the lovers are losers ... tell me if any get more 
than the lovers ... in the dust ... in the cool tombs.

Death comes once, let it be easy.
Ring one bell for me once, let it go at that.
Or ring no bell at all, better yet.

Sing one song if I die.
Sing John Brown's Body or Shout All Over God's Heaven.
Or sing nothing at all, better yet.

Death comes once, let it be easy.

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