I wonder …
Whether shadows of the dead sit somewhere
and look with deep laughter
On men who play in terrible earnest the old, known,
solemn repetitions of history?
Swarming always in a drift of millions
to the dust of toil,
the salt of tears,
And blood drops of undiminishing war.
From Carl Sandburg’s “Momus” in Carl Sandburg, Selected Poems, p113. (Momus was an ancient Greek god of mockery, cynicism, and perpetual criticism.)