All Poems

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Slippery

© Carl Sandburg

THE SIX month child
Fresh from the tub
Wriggles in our hands.
This is our fish child.
Give her a nickname: Slippery.

SLEEP is a maker of makers. Birds sleep. Feet cling to a perch. Look at the balance. Let the legs loosen, the backbone untwist, the head go heavy over, the whole works tumbles a done bird off the perch.

Fox cubs sleep. The pointed head curls round into hind legs and tail. It is a ball of red hair. It is a muff waiting. A wind might whisk it in the air across pastures and rivers, a cocoon, a pod of seeds. The snooze of the black nose is in a circle of red hair.

Slants at Buffalo, New York

© Carl Sandburg

A FOREFINGER of stone, dreamed by a sculptor, points to the sky.
It says: This way! this way!

Four lions snore in stone at the corner of the shaft.

Sixteen Months

© Carl Sandburg

ON the lips of the child Janet float changing dreams.
It is a thin spiral of blue smoke,
A morning campfire at a mountain lake.

Singing Nigger

© Carl Sandburg

YOUR bony head, Jazbo, O dock walloper,
Those grappling hooks, those wheelbarrow handlers,
The dome and the wings of you, nigger,
The red roof and the door of you,

Silver Wind

© Carl Sandburg

DO you know how the dream looms? how if summer misses one of us the two of us miss summer
Summer when the lungs of the earth take a long breath for the change to low contralto singing mornings when the green corn leaves first break through the black loam
And another long breath for the silver soprano melody of the moon songs in the light nights when the earth is lighter than a feather, the iron mountains lighter than a goose down
So I shall look for you in the light nights then, in the laughter of slats of silver under a hill hickory.
In the listening tops of the hickories, in the wind motions of the hickory shingle leaves, in the imitations of slow sea water on the shingle silver in the wind
I shall look for you.

Silver Nails

© Carl Sandburg

A MAN was crucified. He came to the city a stranger,
was accused, and nailed to a cross. He lingered hanging.
Laughed at the crowd. "The nails are iron," he
said, "You are cheap. In my country when we crucify

Shirt

© Carl Sandburg

I remember once I ran after you and tagged the fluttering
shirt of you in the wind.
Once many days ago I drank a glassful of something and
the picture of you shivered and slid on top of the

Shenandoah

© Carl Sandburg

IN the Shenandoah Valley, one rider gray and one rider blue, and the sun on the riders wondering.

Piled in the Shenandoah, riders blue and riders gray, piled with shovels, one and another, dust in the Shenandoah taking them quicker than mothers take children done with play.

The blue nobody remembers, the gray nobody remembers, its all old and old nowadays in the Shenandoah.. . .
And all is young, a butter of dandelions slung on the turf, climbing blue flowers of the wishing woodlands wondering: a midnight purple violet claims the sun among old heads, among old dreams of repeating heads of a rider blue and a rider gray in the Shenandoah.

Sheep

© Carl Sandburg

Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep--
one by one going up the hill and over the fence--one by
one four-footed pattering up and over--one by one wiggling
their stub tails as they take the short jump and go

Sea-Wash

© Carl Sandburg

THE SEA-WASH never ends.
The sea-wash repeats, repeats.
Only old songs? Is that all the sea knows?
Only the old strong songs?
Is that all?
The sea-wash repeats, repeats.

Savoir Faire

© Carl Sandburg

CAST a bronze of my head and legs and put them on the kings street.
Set the cast of me here alongside Carl XII, making two Carls for the Swedish people and the utlanders to look at between the palace and the Grand Hotel.
The summer sun will shine on both the Carls, and November drizzles wrap the two, one in tall leather boots, one in wool leggins.
Also I place it in the record: the Swedish people may name boats after me or change the name of a long street and give it one of my nicknames.

Sandpipers

© Carl Sandburg

Sandland where the salt water kills the sweet potatoes.
Homes for sandpipersthe script of their feet is on the sea shinglesthey write in the morning, it is gone at noonthey write at noon, it is gone at night.
Pity the land, the sea, the ten mile flats, pity anything but the sandpipers wire legs and feet.

Sand Scribblings

© Carl Sandburg

THE WIND stops, the wind begins.
The wind says stop, begin.

A sea shovel scrapes the sand floor.

Rusty Crimson

(Chirstmas Day, 1917)THE FIVE OCLOCK prairie sunset is a strong man going to sleep after a long day in a cornfield.

The red dust of a rusty crimson is fixed with two fingers of lavender. A hook of smoke, a womans nose in charcoal and nothing.

River Roads

LET the crows go by hawking their caw and caw.
They have been swimming in midnights of coal mines somewhere.
Let em hawk their caw and caw.

River Moons

THE DOUBLE moon, one on the high back drop of the west, one on the curve of the river face,
The sky moon of fire and the river moon of water, I am taking these home in a basket, hung on an elbow, such a teeny weeny elbow, in my head.
I saw them last night, a cradle moon, two horns of a moon, such an early hopeful moon, such a childs moon for all young hearts to make a picture of.
The riverI remember this like a picturethe river was the upper twist of a written question mark.
I know now it takes many many years to write a river, a twist of water asking a question.
And white stars moved when the moon moved, and one red star kept burning, and the Big Dipper was almost overhead.

Repetitions

THEY are crying salt tears
Over the beautiful beloved body
Of Inez Milholland,
Because they are glad she lived,

Remorse

THE HORSES name was Remorse.
There were people said, Gee, what a nag!
And they were Edgar Allan Poe bugs and so
They called him Remorse.

Remembered Women

FOR a womans face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night,
For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns.
The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is a row of teeth that bite on the flanks of night, the horizon sings of a new kill and a big kill.
The horizon behind is a wall of dark etched with a memory, fixed with a womans facethey fight on and on, boots in the mud and heads in the gray rainfor the women they hate and the women they lovefor the women they left behind, they fight on.