On the bridges, on the bridges swooping and rising, whirl
ing and circling back to the bridges, always the bridges.
I ll talk forever I m damned if I ll sing. Don t you see
that mine is not a singing people? We re just a lot of
muddy things caught up by the stream. You can t fool
us. Don t we know ourselves?
Here we are, out here in Chicago. You think we re not
humble? You re a liar. We are like the sewerage of our
town, swept up stream by a kind of mechanical triumph
that s what we are.
On the bridges, on the bridges wagons and motors, horses
and men not flying, just tearing along and swearing.
By God we ll love each other or die trying. We ll get to
understanding too. In some grim way our own song shall
work through.
We ll stay down in the muddy depths of our stream we
will. There can t any poet come out here and sit on the
shaky rail of our ugly bridges and sing us into paradise.
We re finding out that s what I want to say. We ll get
at our own thing out here or die for it. We re going
down, numberless thousands of us, into ugly oblivion.
We know that.
But say, bards, you keep off our bridges. Keep out of our
dreams, dreamers. We want to give this democracy thing
they talk so big about a whirl. We want to see if we
are any good out here, we Americans from all over hell.
That s what we want.
Sherwood Anderson
