All Poems

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Interior

© Carl Sandburg

IN the cool of the night time
The clocks pick off the points
And the mainsprings loosen.
They will need winding.

LET us go out of the fog, John, out of the filmy persistent drizzle on the streets of Stockholm, let us put down the collars of our raincoats, take off our hats and sit in the newspapers office.

Let us sit among the telegramsclickety-clickthe kaisers crown goes into the gutter and the Hohenzollern throne of a thousand years falls to pieces a one-hoss shay.

In Tall Grass

© Carl Sandburg

BEES and a honeycomb in the dried head of a horse in a pasture cornera skull in the tall grass and a buzz and a buzz of the yellow honey-hunters.

And I ask no better a winding sheet
(over the earth and under the sun.)

In a Breath

© Carl Sandburg

HIGH noon. White sun flashes on the Michigan Avenue
asphalt. Drum of hoofs and whirr of motors.
Women trapsing along in flimsy clothes catching
play of sun-fire to their skin and eyes.

In a Back Alley

© Carl Sandburg

REMEMBRANCE for a great man is this.
The newsies are pitching pennies.
And on the copper disk is the man's face.
Dead lover of boys, what do you ask for now?

Illinois Farmer

© Carl Sandburg

BURY this old Illinois farmer with respect.
He slept the Illinois nights of his life after days of work in Illinois cornfields.
Now he goes on a long sleep.
The wind he listened to in the cornsilk and the tassels, the wind that combed his red beard zero mornings when the snow lay white on the yellow ears in the bushel basket at the corncrib,
The same wind will now blow over the place here where his hands must dream of Illinois corn.

Ice Handler

© Carl Sandburg

I KNOW an ice handler who wears a flannel shirt with
pearl buttons the size of a dollar,
And he lugs a hundred-pound hunk into a saloon ice-
box, helps himself to cold ham and rye bread,

I Sang

© Carl Sandburg

I sang to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
I sang
O reckless free-hearted

Hydrangeas

© Carl Sandburg

Dragoons, I tell you the white hydrangeas
turn rust and go soon.
Already mid September a line of brown runs
over them.

How Yesterday Looked

© Carl Sandburg

THE HIGH horses of the sea broke their white riders
On the walls that held and counted the hours
The wind lasted.

How Much?

© Carl Sandburg

HOW much do you love me, a million bushels?
Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more.

And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel?

House

© Carl Sandburg

TWO Swede families live downstairs and an Irish policeman upstairs, and an old soldier, Uncle Joe.
Two Swede boys go upstairs and see Joe. His wife is dead, his only son is dead, and his two daughters in Missouri and Texas dont want him around.
The boys and Uncle Joe crack walnuts with a hammer on the bottom of a flatiron while the January wind howls and the zero air weaves laces on the window glass.
Joe tells the Swede boys all about Chickamauga and Chattanooga, how the Union soldiers crept in rain somewhere a dark night and ran forward and killed many Rebels, took flags, held a hill, and won a victory told about in the histories in school.

Horses and Men in Rain

© Carl Sandburg

LET us sit by a hissing steam radiator a winters day, gray wind pattering frozen raindrops on the window,
And let us talk about milk wagon drivers and grocery delivery boys.

Let us keep our feet in wool slippers and mix hot punchesand talk about mail carriers and messenger boys slipping along the icy sidewalks.

Horse Fiddle

© Carl Sandburg

FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind.
Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on his soft wire legs learning to stand up and preach, Jack-in-the-pulpit.
As many poems as I have written to the moon and the streaming of the moon spinners of light, so many of the summer moon and the winter moon I would like to shoot along to your ears for nothing, for a laugh, a song,
for nothing at all,

Hoodlums

I AM a hoodlum, you are a hoodlum, we and all of us are a world of hoodlumsmaybe so.
I hate and kill better men than I am, so do you, so do all of usmaybemaybe so.
In the ends of my fingers the itch for another mans neck, I want to see him hanging, one of dusks cartoons against the sunset.
This is the hate my father gave me, this was in my mothers milk, this is you and me and all of us in a world of hoodlumsmaybe so.

Hits and Runs

I REMEMBER the Chillicothe ball players grappling the Rock Island ball players in a sixteen-inning game ended by darkness.
And the shoulders of the Chillicothe players were a red smoke against the sundown and the shoulders of the Rock Island players were a yellow smoke against the sundown.
And the umpires voice was hoarse calling balls and strikes and outs and the umpires throat fought in the dust for a song.

High Conspiratorial Person

OUT of the testimony of such reluctant lips, out of the oaths and mouths of such scrupulous liars, out of perjurers whose hands swore by God to the white sun before all men,

Out of a rag saturated with smears and smuts gathered from the footbaths of kings and the loin cloths of whores, from the scabs of Babylon and Jerusalem to the scabs of London and New York,

Hemlock and Cedar

THIN sheets of blue smoke among white slabs near the shingle mill winter morning.
Falling of a dry leaf might be heard circular steel tears through a log.
Slope of woodland brown soft tinge of blue such as pansy eyes.
Farther, field fires funnel of yellow smoke spellings of other yellow in corn stubble.
Bobsled on a down-hill road February snow mud horses steaming Oscar the driver sings ragtime under a spot of red seen a mile the red wool yarn of Oscars stocking cap is seen from the shingle mill to the ridge of hemlock and cedar.

Helga

THE WISHES on this childs mouth
Came like snow on marsh cranberries;
The tamarack kept something for her;
The wind is ready to help her shoes.

Haze

KEEP a red heart of memories
Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;