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I asked no other thing,  
No other was denied.  
I offered Being for it;  
The mighty merchant smiled.  

Brazil? He twirled a button,     
Without a glance my way:  
“But, madam, is there nothing else  
That we can show to-day?”
Emily Dickinson 1836-1886


Shakespeare
"Happy in that we are not over
happy. On Fortune's cap,
we are not
the very button." Hamlet

"Pray you, undo this button:
'thank you, sir.''
King Lear

Buttons by Carl Sandburg

I have been watching the war map slammed
up for advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons--red and yellow buttons--blue and black
buttons--are shoved back and forth across the map.

A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the
crowd, And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a black button
one inch west.

Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies
in a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water,
some rattling death in their throats.
Who would guess what it cost
to move two buttons one inch on the war map
here in front of the newspaper office where
the freckle-faced young man is laughing to us?