The Lawyers Know Too Much

The Lawyers Know Too Much

 

The lawyers, Bob, know too much.

They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.

They know it all, what a dead hand wrote,

A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling,

The bones of the fingers a thin white ash.

 

The lawyers know

a dead man's thoughts too well.

 

In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob,

Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers,

Too much hereinbefore provided whereas,

Too many doors to go in and out of.

 

When the lawyers are through

What is there left, Bob?

Can a mouse nibble at it

And find enough to fasten a tooth in?

 

Why is there always a secret singing

When a lawyer cashes in?

Why does a hearse horse snicker

Hauling a lawyer away?

 

The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue.

The knack of a mason outlasts a moon.

The hands of a plasterer hold a room together.

The land of a farmer wishes him back again.

 

Singers of songs and dreamers of plays

Build a house no wind blows over.

 

The lawyers - tell me why a hearse horse snickers hauling a lawyer's

bones.1

 

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)

 

"Sandburg's mocking ode to the work of lawyers should not be dismissed

as the grumbling of an uninformed curmudgeon. ...

What Sandburg lamented was lawyers' formalism,

their use of jargon and abuse of procedural technicalities, their inflexible

adherence to ancient rules and doctrines, and most of all their failure to be

more constructive and creative contributors to the community."