All Poems

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Dreams in the dusk

© Carl Sandburg

DREAMS in the dusk,
Only dreams closing the day
And with the day's close going back
To the gray things, the dark things,
The far, deep things of dreamland.

Dogheads

© Carl Sandburg

AMONG the grassroots
In the moonlight, who comes circling,
red tongues and high noses?
Is one of em Buck and one of em

Docks

© Carl Sandburg

STROLLING along
By the teeming docks,
I watch the ships put out.
Black ships that heave and lunge
And move like mastodons
Arising from lethargic sleep.

Do You Want Affidavits?

© Carl Sandburg

THERES a hole in the bottom of the sea.
Do you want affidavits?
Theres a man in the moon with money for you.
Do you want affidavits?

THE LADY in red, she in the chile con carne red,
Brilliant as the shine of a pepper crimson in the summer sun,
She behind a false-face, the much sought-after dancer, the most sought-after dancer of all in this masquerade,
The lady in red sox and red hat, ankles of willow, crimson arrow amidst the Spanish clashes of music,

Dan

© Carl Sandburg

EARLY May, after cold rain the sun baffling cold wind.
Irish setter pup finds a corner near the cellar door, all sun and no wind,
Cuddling there he crosses forepaws and lays his skull
Sideways on this pillow, dozing in a half-sleep,
Browns of hazel nut, mahogany, rosewood, played off against each other on his paws and head.

Curse of a Rich Polish Peasant on His Sister Who Ran Away With a Wild Man

© Carl Sandburg

FELIKSOWA has gone again from our house and this time for good, I hope.
She and her husband took with them the cow father gave them, and they sold it.
She went like a swine, because she called neither on me, her brother, nor on her father, before leaving for those forests.
That is where she ought to live, with bears, not with men.

Cumulatives

© Carl Sandburg

STORMS have beaten on this point of land
And ships gone to wreck here
and the passers-by remember it
with talk on the deck at night
as they near it.

Crucible

© Carl Sandburg

Hot gold runs a winding stream on the inside of a green bowl.

Cripple

© Carl Sandburg

ONCE when I saw a cripple
Gasping slowly his last days with the white plague,
Looking from hollow eyes, calling for air,
Desperately gesturing with wasted hands

Crimson Rambler

© Carl Sandburg

NOW that a crimson rambler
begins to crawl over the house
of our two lives

Crimson Changes People

© Carl Sandburg

DID I see a crucifix in your eyes
and nails and Roman soldiers
and a dusk Golgotha?

Crimson

© Carl Sandburg

CRIMSON is the slow smolder of the cigar end I hold,
Gray is the ash that stiffens and covers all silent the fire.
(A great man I know is dead and while he lies in his
coffin a gone flame I sit here in cumbering shadows
and smoke and watch my thoughts come and go.)

Crapshooters

© Carl Sandburg

SOMEBODY loses whenever somebody wins.
This was known to the Chaldeans long ago.
And more: somebody wins whenever somebody loses.
This too was in the savvy of the Chaldeans.

Crabapple Blossoms

SOMEBODYS little girlhow easy to make a sob story over who she was once and who she is now.
Somebodys little girlshe played once under a crab-apple tree in June and the blossoms fell on the dark hair.

It was somewhere on the Erie line and the town was Salamanca or Painted Post or Horses Head.

Corn Hut Talk

WRITE your wishes
on the door
and come in.

Cool Tombs

WHEN Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs, he forgot the copperheads and the assassin in the dust, in the cool tombs.

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes in the dust, in the cool tombs.

Clocks

HERE is a face that says half-past seven the same way whether a murder or a wedding goes on, whether a funeral or a picnic crowd passes.
A tall one I know at the end of a hallway broods in shadows and is watching booze eat out the insides of the man of the house; it has seen five hopes go in five years: one woman, one child, and three dreams.
A little one carried in a leather box by an actress rides with her to hotels and is under her pillow in a sleeping-car between one-night stands.
One hoists a phiz over a railroad station; it points numbers to people a quarter-mile away who believe it when other clocks fail.
And of course there are wrist watches over the pulses of airmen eager to go to France

Clinton South of Polk

I WANDER down on Clinton street south of Polk
And listen to the voices of Italian children quarreling.
It is a cataract of coloratura
And I could sleep to their musical threats and accusations.

Clean Hands

IT is something to face the sun and know you are free.
To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth
And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean:
It is something.