Car poems
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Pearl Fog
© Carl Sandburg
Open the door now.
Go roll up the collar of your coat
To walk in the changing scarf of mist.
New Farm Tractor
© Carl Sandburg
The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses.
It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse power pull here.
Near Keokuk
© Carl Sandburg
THIRTY-TWO Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek.
Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water.
All one midsummer day ten hours the Greeks
stand in leather shoes shoveling gravel.
Momus
© Carl Sandburg
Momus is the name men give your face,
The brag of its tone, like a long low steamboat whistle
Finding a way mid mist on a shoreland,
Where gray rocks let the salt water shatter spray
Against horizons purple, silent.
Memoir of a Proud Boy
© Carl Sandburg
HE lived on the wings of storm.
The ashes are in Chihuahua.
Out of Ludlow and coal towns in Colorado
Medallion
© Carl Sandburg
THE BRASS medallion profile of your face I keep always.
It is not jingling with loose change in my pockets.
It is not stuck up in a show place on the office wall.
I carry it in a special secret pocket in the day
Mask
© Carl Sandburg
Fling your red scarf faster and faster, dancer.
It is summer and the sun loves a million green leaves,
masses of green.
Your red scarf flashes across them calling and a-calling.
Loin Cloth
© Carl Sandburg
BODY of Jesus taken down from the cross
Carved in ivory by a lover of Christ,
It is a childs handful you are here,
The breadth of a mans finger,
Leather Leggings
© Carl Sandburg
THEY have taken the ball of earth
and made it a little thing.
They were held to the land and horses;
Knucks
© Carl Sandburg
IN Abraham Lincolns city,
Where they remember his lawyers shingle,
The place where they brought him
Wrapped in battle flags,
Interior
© Carl Sandburg
IN the cool of the night time
The clocks pick off the points
And the mainsprings loosen.
They will need winding.
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.
Hoodlums
© Carl Sandburg
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.
Haze
© Carl Sandburg
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;
Grieg Being Dead
© Carl Sandburg
GRIEG being dead we may speak of him and his art.
Grieg being dead we can talk about whether he was any good or not.
Grieg being with Ibsen, Björnson, Lief Ericson and the rest,
Grieg being dead does not care a hells hoot what we say.
Government
© Carl Sandburg
Everywhere I saw that Government is a thing made of
men, that Government has blood and bones, it is
many mouths whispering into many ears, sending
telegrams, aiming rifles, writing orders, saying
"yes" and "no."
Gone
© Carl Sandburg
Were there ten men or a hundred hunting Chick?
Were there five men or fifty with aching hearts?
Everybody loved Chick Lorimer.
Nobody knows where she's gone.
Garden Wireless
© Carl Sandburg
HOW many feet ran with sunlight, water, and air?
What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles,
Flying Fish
© Carl Sandburg
I HAVE lived in many half-worlds myself
and so I know you.
I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea, the same circling birds and the same plunge of furrows carved by the plowing keel.
