All Poems

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Our Prayer of Thanks

© Carl Sandburg

For the gladness here where the sun is shining at
evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.

YOU never come back.
I say good-by when I see you going in the doors,
The hopeless open doors that call and wait
And take you then for--how many cents a day?
How many cents for the sleepy eyes and fingers?

Iron

© Carl Sandburg

Shovels,
Broad, iron shovels,
Scooping out oblong vaults,
Loosening turf and leveling sod.

Humming Bird Woman

© Carl Sandburg

WHY should I be wondering
How you would look in black velvet and yellow? in orange and green?
I who cannot remember whether it was a dash of blue
Or a whirr of red under your willow throat
Why do I wonder how you would look in humming-bird feathers?

Humdrum

© Carl Sandburg

IF I had a million lives to live
and a million deaths to die
in a million humdrum worlds,
Id like to change my name

Honky Tonk in Cleveland, Ohio

© Carl Sandburg

ITS a jazz affair, drum crashes and cornet razzes
The trombone pony neighs and the tuba jackass snorts.
The banjo tickles and titters too awful.
The chippies talk about the funnies in the papers.

Dream Girl

© Carl Sandburg

YOU will come one day in a waver of love,
Tender as dew, impetuous as rain,
The tan of the sun will be on your skin,
The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech,
You will pose with a hill-flower grace.

Cups of Coffee

© Carl Sandburg

THE HAGGARD woman with a hacking cough and a deathless love whispers of white
flowers in your poem you pour like a cup of coffee, Gabriel.

The slim girl whose voice was lost in the waves of flesh piled on her bones and

Child of the Romans

© Carl Sandburg

THE dago shovelman sits by the railroad track
Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna.
A train whirls by, and men and women at tables
Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils,

Child Moon

© Carl Sandburg

The child's wonder
At the old moon
Comes back nightly.
She points her finger

Buttons

© Carl Sandburg

I HAVE been watching the war map slammed up for
advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons--red and yellow buttons--blue and black buttons--
are shoved back and forth across the map.

Buckwheat

© Carl Sandburg

1THERE was a late autumn cricket,
And two smoldering mountain sunsets
Under the valley roads of her eyes.

Bricklayer Love

© Carl Sandburg

I THOUGHT of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store.

I dont care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons.

Alley Rats

© Carl Sandburg

THEY were calling certain styles of whiskers by the name of lilacs.
And another manner of beard assumed in their chatter a verbal guise
Of mutton chops, galways, feather dusters.

The Road and the End

I SHALL foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.

Lost

DESOLATE and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat

Joy

Let a joy keep you.
Reach out your hands
And take it when it runs by,
As the Apache dancer

I Am The People, The Mob

I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the

Hate

ONE man killed another. The saying between them had been Id give you the shirt off my back.

The killer wept over the dead. The dead if he looks back knows the killer was sorry. It was a shot in one second of hate out of ten years of love.

Why is the sun a red ball in the six oclock mist?
Why is the moon a tumbling chimney? tumbling tumbling Id give you the shirt off my back And Ill kill you if my head goes wrong.

Bones

Sling me under the sea.
Pack me down in the salt and wet.
No farmer's plow shall touch my bones.
No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak