Poetry Month

Mohammed Bek Hadjetlache
by Carl Sandburg

This Mohammedan colonel from the Caucasus yells with his
     voice and wigwags with his arms.
The interpreter translates, "I was a friend of Kornilov, he
     asks me what to do and I tell him."
A stub of a man, this Mohammedan colonel … a projectile
     shape … a bald head hammered …
"Does he fight or do they put him in a cannon and shoot
     him at the enemy?"
This fly-by-night, this bull-roarer who knows everybody.
     "I write forty books, history of Islam, history of Europe,
     true religion, scientific farming, I am the Roosevelt of the
     Caucasus, I go to America and ride horses in the moving
     pictures for $500,000, you get $50,000 …"
"I have 30,000 acres in the Caucasus, I have a stove factory
     in Petrograd the bolsheviks take from me, I am an old
     friend of the Czar, I am an old family friend of
     Clemenceau …"
These hands strangled three fellow workers for the czarist
     restoration, took their money, sent them in sacks to a
     river bottom … and scandalized Stockholm with his gang
     of strangler women.
Mid-sea strangler hands rise before me illustrating a wish,
     "I ride horses for the moving pictures in America,
     $500,000, and you get ten per cent …"
This rider of fugitive dawns.…