All Poems

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DEATH is stronger than all the governments because the governments are men and men die and then death laughs: Now you see em, now you dont.

Death is stronger than all proud men and so death snips proud men on the nose, throws a pair of dice and says: Read em and weep.

Choose

© Carl Sandburg

THE single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

Choices

© Carl Sandburg

They offer you many things,
I a few.
Moonlight on the play of fountains at night
With water sparkling a drowsy monotone,

Chicago Poet

© Carl Sandburg

I SALUTED a nobody.
I saw him in a looking-glass.
He smiledso did I.
He crumpled the skin on his forehead,

Buffalo Dusk

© Carl Sandburg

THE BUFFALOES are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,
Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone.

Blue Ridge

© Carl Sandburg

BORN a million years ago you stay here a million years
watching the women come and live and be laid away
you and they thin-gray thin-dusk lovely.
So it goes: either the early morning lights are lovely or the early morning star.
I am glad I have seen racehorses, women, mountains.

Blacklisted

© Carl Sandburg

WHY shall I keep the old name?
What is a name anywhere anyway?
A name is a cheap thing all fathers and mothers leave
each child:

Bath

© Carl Sandburg

A MAN saw the whole world as a grinning skull and
cross-bones. The rose flesh of life shriveled from all
faces. Nothing counts. Everything is a fake. Dust to
dust and ashes to ashes and then an old darkness and a

Aztec Mask

© Carl Sandburg

I wanted a man's face looking into the jaws and throat
of life
With something proud on his face, so proud no smash
of the jaws,

Autumn Movement

© Carl Sandburg

I CRIED over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

Accomplished Facts

© Carl Sandburg

EVERY year Emily Dickinson sent one friend
the first arbutus bud in her garden.

In a last will and testament Andrew Jackson

A Sphinx

© Carl Sandburg

Close-mouthed you sat five thousand years and never
let out a whisper.
Processions came by, marchers, asking questions you
answered with grey eyes never blinking, shut lips

A Fence

© Carl Sandburg

NOW the stone house on the lake front is finished and the
workmen are beginning the fence.
The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that
can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.

Who am I?

© Carl Sandburg

My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.

Waiting

TODAY I will let the old boat stand
Where the sweep of the harbor tide comes in
To the pulse of a far, deep-steady sway.
And I will rest and dream and sit on the deck
Watching the world go by
And take my pay for many hard days gone I remember.

The Shovel Man

ON the street
Slung on his shoulder is a handle half way across,
Tied in a big knot on the scoop of cast iron
Are the overalls faded from sun and rain in the ditches;

The Mist

I AM the mist, the impalpable mist,
Back of the thing you seek.
My arms are long,
Long as the reach of time and space.

The Lawyers Know Too Much

THE LAWYERS, Bob, know too much.
They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.
They know it all, what a dead hand wrote,
A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling,

Soup

I SAW a famous man eating soup.
I say he was lifting a fat broth
Into his mouth with a spoon.
His name was in the newspapers that day

Psalm of Those Who Go Forth Before Daylight

THE POLICEMAN buys shoes slow and careful;
the teamster buys gloves slow and careful;
they take care of their feet and hands;
they live on their feet and hands.