Death poems
/ page 516 of 560 /
Chamfort
© Carl Sandburg
THERE'S Chamfort. He's a sample.
Locked himself in his library with a gun,
Shot off his nose and shot out his right eye.
And this Chamfort knew how to write
An Electric Sign Goes Dark
© Carl Sandburg
POLAND, France, Judea ran in her veins,
Singing to Paris for bread, singing to Gotham in a fizz at the pop of a bottles cork.
Wont you come and play wiz me she sang
and I just cant make my eyes behave.
A Million Young Workmen, 1915
© Carl Sandburg
A MILLION young workmen straight and strong lay stiff on the grass and roads,
And the million are now under soil and their rottening flesh will in the years feed roots of blood-red roses.
Yes, this million of young workmen slaughtered one another and never saw their red hands.
And oh, it would have been a great job of killing and a new and beautiful thing under the sun if the million knew why they hacked and tore each other to death.
Under the Harvest Moon
© Carl Sandburg
Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Under A Telephone Pole
© Carl Sandburg
I AM a copper wire slung in the air,
Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow.
Night and day I keep singing--humming and thrumming:
It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the
Sandhill People
© Carl Sandburg
I TOOK away three pictures.
One was a white gull forming a half-mile arch from the pines toward Waukegan.
One was a whistle in the little sandhills, a bird crying either to the sunset gone or the dusk come.
One was three spotted waterbirds, zigzagging, cutting scrolls and jags, writing a bird Sanscrit of wing points, half over the sand, half over the water, a half-love for the sea, a half-love for the land.
From The Shore
© Carl Sandburg
A LONE gray bird,
Dim-dipping, far-flying,
Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults
Of night and the sea
And the stars and storms.
Flash Crimson
© Carl Sandburg
I SHALL cry God to give me a broken foot.
I shall ask for a scar and a slashed nose.
Finish
© Carl Sandburg
DEATH comes once, let it be easy.
Ring one bell for me once, let it go at that.
Or ring no bell at all, better yet.
Death Snips Proud Men
© Carl Sandburg
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.
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,
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.
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
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
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.
Joy
© Carl Sandburg
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
© Carl Sandburg
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
The Junk Man
© Carl Sandburg
I AM glad God saw Death
And gave Death a job taking care of all who are tired
of living:
The Bull Moose
© Alden Nowlan
Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture.
An Autumn Sunset
© Edith Wharton
ILeaguered in fire
The wild black promontories of the coast extend
Their savage silhouettes;
The sun in universal carnage sets,
