All Poems

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© Carl Sandburg

I SAW a telegram handed a two hundred pound man at a desk. And the little scrap of paper charged the air like a set of crystals in a chemists tube to a whispering pinch of salt.
Cross my heart, the two hundred pound man had just cracked a joke about a new hat he got his wife, when the messenger boy slipped in and asked him to sign. He gave the boy a nickel, tore the envelope and read.
Then he yelled Good God, jumped for his hat and raincoat, ran for the elevator and took a taxi to a railroad depot.

Tawny

© Carl Sandburg

THESE are the tawny days: your face comes back.

The grapes take on purple: the sunsets redden early on the trellis.

Tangibles

© Carl Sandburg

(Washington, August, 1918)I HAVE seen this city in the day and the sun.
I have seen this city in the night and the moon.
And in the night and the moon I have seen a thing this city gave me nothing of in the day and the sun.

Swirl

© Carl Sandburg

A SWIRL in the air where your head was once, here.
You walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for me
I might almost stand here and believe you alive.

Summer Stars

© Carl Sandburg

BEND low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,

Sumach and Birds

© Carl Sandburg

IF you never came with a pigeon rainbow purple
Shining in the six oclock September dusk:
If the red sumach on the autumn roads
Never danced on the flame of your eyelashes:

Subway

© Carl Sandburg

DOWN between the walls of shadow
Where the iron laws insist,
The hunger voices mock.

Style

© Carl Sandburg

STYLE--go ahead talking about style.
You can tell where a man gets his style just
as you can tell where Pavlowa got her legs
or Ty Cobb his batting eye.

Stripes

© Carl Sandburg

POLICEMAN in front of a bank 3 A.M. lonely.
Policeman State and Madison high noon mobs cars parcels lonely.

Woman in suburbs keeping night watch on a sleeping typhoid patient only a clock to talk to lonesome.
Woman selling gloves bargain day department store furious crazy-work of many hands slipping in and out of gloves lonesome.

Streets Too Old

© Carl Sandburg

I WALKED among the streets of an old city and the streets were lean as the throats of hard seafish soaked in salt and kept in barrels many years.
How old, how old, how old, we are:the walls went on saying, street walls leaning toward each other like old women of the people, like old midwives tired and only doing what must be done.
The greatest the city could offer me, a stranger, was statues of the kings, on all corners bronzes of kingsancient bearded kings who wrote books and spoke of Gods love for all peopleand young kings who took forth armies out across the frontiers splitting the heads of their opponents and enlarging their kingdoms.
Strangest of all to me, a stranger in this old city, was the murmur always whistling on the winds twisting out of the armpits and fingertips of the kings in bronze:Is there no loosening? Is this for always?
In an early snowflurry one cried:Pull me down where the tired old midwives no longer look at me, throw the bronze of me to a fierce fire and make me into neckchains for dancing children.

Street Window

© Carl Sandburg

THE PAWN-SHOP man knows hunger,
And how far hunger has eaten the heart
Of one who comes with an old keepsake.
Here are wedding rings and baby bracelets,

Statistics

© Carl Sandburg

NAPOLEON shifted,
Restless in the old sarcophagus
And murmured to a watchguard:
"Who goes there?"

Stars, Songs, Faces

© Carl Sandburg

GATHER the stars if you wish it so.
Gather the songs and keep them.
Gather the faces of women.
Gather for keeping years and years.

Spanish

© Carl Sandburg

FASTEN black eyes on me.
I ask nothing of you under the peach trees,
Fasten your black eyes in my gray with the spear of a storm.
The air under the peach blossoms is a haze of pink.

Southern Pacific

HUNTINGTON sleeps in a house six feet long.
Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned.
Huntington dreams of ten thousand men saying: Yes, sir.

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

Snow

SNOW took us away from the smoke valleys into white mountains, we saw velvet blue cows eating a vermillion grass and they gave us a pink milk.

Snow changes our bones into fog streamers caught by the wind and spelled into many dances.

Smoke Rose Gold

THE DOME of the capitol looks to the Potomac river.
Out of haze over the sunset,
Out of a smoke rose gold:
One star shines over the sunset.

Smoke and Steel

SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,
Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
They all go up in a line with a smokestack,

Smoke

I SIT in a chair and read the newspapers.

Millions of men go to war, acres of them are buried, guns and ships broken, cities burned, villages sent up in smoke, and children where cows are killed off amid hoarse barbecues vanish like finger-rings of smoke in a north wind.

I sit in a chair and read the newspapers.