Carl Sandburg

Here you will find the Poem Soiled Dove of poet Carl Sandburg

Soiled Dove

Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she
 married a corporation lawyer who picked her from
 a Ziegfeld chorus.
Before then she never took anybody's money and paid
 for her silk stockings out of what she earned singing
 and dancing.
She loved one man and he loved six women and the
 game was changing her looks, calling for more and
 more massage money and high coin for the beauty
 doctors.
Now she drives a long, underslung motor car all by herself,
 reads in the day's papers what her husband is
 doing to the inter-state commerce commission, requires
 a larger corsage from year to year, and wonders
 sometimes how one man is coming along with
 six women.