All Poems

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Memoir of a Proud Boy

© Carl Sandburg

HE lived on the wings of storm.
The ashes are in Chihuahua.

Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado

We look on the shoulders filling the stage of the Chicago Auditorium.

A fat mayor has spoken much English and the mud of his speech is crossed with quicksilver hisses elusive and rapid from floor and gallery.

Medallion

© Carl Sandburg

THE BRASS medallion profile of your face I keep always.
It is not jingling with loose change in my pockets.
It is not stuck up in a show place on the office wall.
I carry it in a special secret pocket in the day

Masses

© Carl Sandburg

AMONG the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and
red crag and was amazed;
On the beach where the long push under the endless tide
maneuvers, I stood silent;

Mask

© Carl Sandburg

Fling your red scarf faster and faster, dancer.
It is summer and the sun loves a million green leaves,
masses of green.
Your red scarf flashes across them calling and a-calling.

Mascots

© Carl Sandburg

I WILL keep you and bring hands to hold you against a great hunger.
I will run a spear in you for a great gladness to die with.
I will stab you between the ribs of the left side with a great love worth remembering.

Margaret

© Carl Sandburg

Many birds and the beating of wings
Make a flinging reckless hum
In the early morning at the rocks
Above the blue pool
Where the gray shadows swim lazy.

Manufactured Gods

© Carl Sandburg

THEY put up big wooden gods.
Then they burned the big wooden gods
And put up brass gods and
Changing their minds suddenly

Manual System

© Carl Sandburg

MARY has a thingamajig clamped on her ears
And sits all day taking plugs out and sticking plugs in.
Flashes and flashesvoices and voices calling for ears to pour words in
Faces at the ends of wires asking for other faces at the ends of other wires:
All day taking plugs out and sticking plugs in,
Mary has a thingamajig clamped on her ears.

Manitoba Childe Roland

© Carl Sandburg

LAST night a January wind was ripping at the shingles over our house and whistling a wolf
song under the eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl the Browning poem, Childe

Man, the Man-Hunter

© Carl Sandburg

I SAW Man, the man-hunter,
Hunting with a torch in one hand
And a kerosene can in the other,
Hunting with guns, ropes, shackles.

Mammy Hums

© Carl Sandburg

THIS is the song I rested with:
The right shoulder of a strong man I leaned on.
The face of the rain that drizzled on the short neck of a canal boat.
The eyes of a child who slept while death went over and under.

Mamie

© Carl Sandburg

romance
and big things
and real dreams
that never go smash.

Losses

© Carl Sandburg

I HAVE love
And a child,
A banjo
And shadows.

Losers

IF I should pass the tomb of Jonah
I would stop there and sit for awhile;
Because I was swallowed one time deep in the dark
And came out alive after all.

Loin Cloth

BODY of Jesus taken down from the cross
Carved in ivory by a lover of Christ,
It is a childs handful you are here,
The breadth of a mans finger,

Localities

WAGON WHEEL GAP is a place I never saw
And Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of Cripple Creek.

Red-shirted miners picking in the sluices,

Loam

IN the loam we sleep,
In the cool moist loam,
To the lull of years that pass
And the break of stars,

Limited

I AM riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains
of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air
go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.

Letters To Dead Imagists

EMILY DICKINSON:
You gave us the bumble bee who has a soul,
The everlasting traveler among the hollyhocks,
And how God plays around a back yard garden.