All Poems

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Woman with a Past

© Carl Sandburg

THERE was a woman tore off a red velvet gown
And slashed the white skin of her right shoulder
And a crimson zigzag wrote a finger nail hurry.

Wistful

© Carl Sandburg

WISHES left on your lips
The mark of their wings.
Regrets fly kites in your eyes.

Winter Milk

© Carl Sandburg

THE MILK drops on your chin, Helga,
Must not interfere with the cranberry red of your cheeks
Nor the sky winter blue of your eyes.
Let your mammy keep hands off the chin.

Window

© Carl Sandburg

Night from a railroad car window
Is a great, dark, soft thing
Broken across with slashes of light.

White Shoulders

© Carl Sandburg

YOUR white shoulders
I remember
And your shrug of laughter.

White Ash

© Carl Sandburg

THERE is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice.

She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door.

NEITHER rose leaves gathered in a jarrespectably in Bostonthesenor drops of Christ blood for a chalicedecently in Philadelphia or Baltimore.

Cindersthesehissing in a marl and lime of Chicagoalso thesethe howling of northwest winds across North and South Dakotaor the spatter of winter spray on sea rocks of Kamchatka.

Whiffletree

© Carl Sandburg

GIVE me your anathema.
Speak new damnations on my head.
The evening mist in the hills is soft.
The boulders on the road say communion.

Weeds

© Carl Sandburg

FROM the time of the early radishes
To the time of the standing corn
Sleepy Henry Hackerman hoes.

Washerwoman

© Carl Sandburg

THE WASHERWOMAN is a member of the Salvation Army.
And over the tub of suds rubbing underwear clean
She sings that Jesus will wash her sins away
And the red wrongs she has done God and man
Shall be white as driven snow.
Rubbing underwear she sings of the Last Great Washday.

Wars

© Carl Sandburg

IN the old wars drum of hoofs and the beat of shod feet.
In the new wars hum of motors and the tread of rubber tires.
In the wars to come silent wheels and whirr of rods not
yet dreamed out in the heads of men.

Village in Late Summer

© Carl Sandburg

LIPS half-willing in a doorway.
Lips half-singing at a window.
Eyes half-dreaming in the walls.
Feet half-dancing in a kitchen.
Even the clocks half-yawn the hours
And the farmers make half-answers.

Vaudeville Dancer

© Carl Sandburg

ELSIE FLIMMERWON, you got a job now with a jazz outfit in vaudeville.

The houses go wild when you finish the act shimmying a fast shimmy to The Livery Stable Blues.

Valley Song

© Carl Sandburg

YOUR eyes and the valley are memories.
Your eyes fire and the valley a bowl.
It was here a moonrise crept over the timberline.
It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down.

Upstairs

I TOO have a garret of old playthings.
I have tin soldiers with broken arms upstairs.
I have a wagon and the wheels gone upstairs.
I have guns and a drum, a jumping-jack and a magic lantern.
And dust is on them and I never look at them upstairs.
I too have a garret of old playthings.

Uplands In May

WONDER as of old things
Fresh and fair come back
Hangs over pasture and road.
Lush in the lowland grasses rise
And upland beckons to upland.
The great strong hills are humble.

Under

I
I AM the undertow
Washing tides of power
Battering the pillars
Under your things of high law.

Two Strangers Breakfast

THE LAW says you and I belong to each other, George.
The law says you are mine and I am yours, George.
And there are a million miles of white snowstorms, a million furnaces of hell,
Between the chair where you sit and the chair where I sit.
The law says two strangers shall eat breakfast together after nights on the horn of an Arctic moon.

Two Neighbors

FACES of two eternities keep looking at me.
One is Omar Khayam and the red stuff
wherein men forget yesterday and to-morrow
and remember only the voices and songs,

Two Items

STRONG rocks hold up the riksdag bridge always strong river waters shoving their shoulders against them
In the riksdag to-night three hundred men are talking to each other about more potatoes and bread for the Swedish people to eat this winter.
In a boat among calm waters next to the running waters a fisherman sits in the dark and I, leaning at a parapet, see him lift a net and let it down he waits the waters run the riksdag talks he lifts the net and lets it down
Stars lost in the sky ten days of drizzle spread over the sky saying yes-yes.