Poems begining by B
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Bronzes
© Carl Sandburg
ITHE bronze General Grant riding a bronze horse in Lincoln
Park
Shrivels in the sun by day when the motor cars whirr
by in long processions going somewhere to keep appointment
Broken-face Gargoyles
© Carl Sandburg
ALL I can give you is broken-face gargoyles.
It is too early to sing and dance at funerals,
Though I can whisper to you I am looking for an undertaker humming a lullaby and throwing his feet in a swift and mystic buck-and-wing, now you see it and now you dont.
Broken Tabernacles
© Carl Sandburg
HAVE I broken the smaller tabernacles, O Lord?
And in the destruction of these set up the greater and massive, the everlasting tabernacles?
I know nothing today, what I have done and why, O Lord, only I have broken and broken tabernacles.
They were beautiful in a way, these tabernacles torn down by strong hands swearing
They were beautifulwhy did the hypocrites carve their own names on the corner-stones? why did the hypocrites keep on singing their own names in their long noses every Sunday in these tabernacles?
Who lays any blame here among the split cornerstones?
Broadway
© Carl Sandburg
Hearts that know you hate you
And lips that have given you laughter
Have gone to their ashes of life and its roses,
Cursing the dreams that were lost
In the dust of your harsh and trampled stones.
Brass Keys
© Carl Sandburg
JOY
weaving two violet petals for a coat lapel
painting on a slab of night sky a Christ face
slipping new brass keys into rusty iron locks and shouldering till at last the door gives and we are in a new room
forever and ever violet petals, slabs, the Christ face, brass keys and new rooms.
are we near or far?
is there anything else?
who comes back?
and why does love ask nothing and give all? and why is love rare as a tailed comet shaking guesses out of men at telescopes ten feet long? why does the mystery sit with its chin on the lean forearm of women in gray eyes and women in hazel eyes?
Branches
© Carl Sandburg
The long beautiful night of the wind and rain in April,
The long night hanging down from the drooping branches of the top of a birch tree,
Swinging, swaying, to the wind for a partner, to the rain for a partner.
What is the humming, swishing thing they sing in the morning now?
The rain, the wind, the swishing whispers of the long slim curve so little and so dark on the western morning sky
these dancing girls here on an April early morning
They have had a long cool beautiful night of it with their partners learning this years song of April.
Boy and Father
© Carl Sandburg
THE BOY Alexander understands his father to be a famous lawyer.
The leather law books of Alexanders father fill a room like hay in a barn.
Alexander has asked his father to let him build a house like bricklayers build, a house with walls and roofs made of big leather law books.
Blue Maroons
© Carl Sandburg
YOU slut, he flung at her.
It was more than a hundred times
He had thrown it into her face
And by this time it meant nothing to her.
Blue Island Intersection
© Carl Sandburg
SIX street ends come together here.
They feed people and wagons into the center.
In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags,
Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies.
Blizzard Notes
© Carl Sandburg
I DONT blame the kettle drumsthey are hungry.
And the snare drumsI know what they wantthey are empty too.
And the harring booming bass drumsthey are hungriest of all.. . .
The howling spears of the Northwest die down.
The lullabies of the Southwest get a chance, a mother song.
A cradle moon rides out of a torn hole in the ragbag top of the sky.
Bilbea
© Carl Sandburg
BILBEA, I was in Babylon on Saturday night.
I saw nothing of you anywhere.
I was at the old place and the other girls were there, but no Bilbea.
Between Two Hills
© Carl Sandburg
The prayers are said
And the people rest
For sleep is there
And the touch of dreams
Is over all.
Basket
© Carl Sandburg
SPEAK, sir, and be wise.
Speak choosing your words, sir, like an old woman over a bushel of apples.
Bas-Relief
© Carl Sandburg
FIVE geese deploy mysteriously.
Onward proudly with flagstaffs,
Hearses with silver bugles,
Bushels of plum-blossoms dropping
Band Concert
© Carl Sandburg
BAND concert public square Nebraska city. Flowing and circling dresses, summer-white dresses. Faces, flesh tints flung like sprays of cherry blossoms. And gigglers, God knows, gigglers, rivaling the pony whinnies of the Livery Stable Blues.
Cowboy rags and nigger rags. And boys driving sorrel horses hurl a cornfield laughter at the girls in dresses, summer-white dresses. Amid the cornet staccato and the tuba oompa, gigglers, God knows, gigglers daffy with lifes razzle dazzle.
Baltic Fog Notes
© Carl Sandburg
(Bergen)SEVEN days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas.
I was a plaything, a rats neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff.
Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon.
Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky,
Balloon Faces
© Carl Sandburg
THE BALLOONS hang on wires in the Marigold Gardens.
They spot their yellow and gold, they juggle their blue and red, they float their faces on the face of the sky.
Balloon face eaters sit by hundreds reading the eat cards, asking, What shall we eat?and the waiters, Have you ordered? they are sixty ballon faces sifting white over the tuxedoes.
Poets, lawyers, ad men, mason contractors, smartalecks discussing educated jackasses, here they put crabs into their balloon faces.
Back Yard
© Carl Sandburg
Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.
Baby Vamps
© Carl Sandburg
BABY vamps, is it harder work than it used to be?
Are the new soda parlors worse than the old time saloons?
Baby vamps, do you have jobs in the day time or is this all you do? do you come out only at night?
In the winter at the skating rinks, in the summer at the roller coaster parks,
