Jazz Fantasia

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 hushahusha-hush with the (5)
slippery sand-paper.
  
Moan like an autumn wind high in the lonesome tree-tops,
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, (10)
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 (15)
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.

by Carl Sandburg