Love poems

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Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep--
one by one going up the hill and over the fence--one by
one four-footed pattering up and over--one by one wiggling
their stub tails as they take the short jump and go

Repetitions

© Carl Sandburg

THEY are crying salt tears
Over the beautiful beloved body
Of Inez Milholland,
Because they are glad she lived,

Remembered Women

© Carl Sandburg

FOR a womans face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night,
For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns.
The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is a row of teeth that bite on the flanks of night, the horizon sings of a new kill and a big kill.
The horizon behind is a wall of dark etched with a memory, fixed with a womans facethey fight on and on, boots in the mud and heads in the gray rainfor the women they hate and the women they lovefor the women they left behind, they fight on.

Put Off the Wedding Five Times and Nobody Comes to It

© Carl Sandburg

(Handbook for Quarreling Lovers)I THOUGHT of offering you apothegms.
I might have said, Dogs bark and the wind carries it away.
I might have said, He who would make a door of gold must knock a nail in every day.
So easy, so easy it would have been to inaugurate a high impetuous moment for you to look on before the final farewells were spoken.

Prairie

© Carl Sandburg

I WAS born on the prairie and the milk of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me a song and a slogan.

Here the water went down, the icebergs slid with gravel, the gaps and the valleys hissed, and the black loam came, and the yellow sandy loam.
Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches.

Poppies

© Carl Sandburg

She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.
In a loose white gown she walks
and a new child tugs at cords in her body.
Her head to the west at evening when the dew is creeping,
A shudder of gladness runs in her bones and torsal fiber:
She loves blood-red poppies for a garden to walk in.

Personality

© Carl Sandburg

Musings of a Police Reporter in the Identification BureauYOU have loved forty women, but you have only one thumb.
You have led a hundred secret lives, but you mark only
one thumb.
You go round the world and fight in a thousand wars and

Pencils

© Carl Sandburg

PENCILS
telling where the wind comes from
open a story.

Passers-By

© Carl Sandburg

Yes,
Written on
Your mouths
And your throats
I read them
When you passed by.

Old-fashioned Requited Love

© Carl Sandburg

I HAVE ransacked the encyclopedias
And slid my fingers among topics and titles
Looking for you.

North Atlantic

© Carl Sandburg

WHEN the sea is everywhere
from horizon to horizon ..
when the salt and blue
fill a circle of horizons ..

Night Stuff

© Carl Sandburg

LISTEN a while, the moon is a lovely woman, a lonely woman, lost in a silver dress, lost in a circus riders silver dress.

Listen a while, the lake by night is a lonely woman, a lovely woman, circled with birches and pines mixing their green and white among stars shattered in spray clear nights.

I know the moon and the lake have twisted the roots under my heart the same as a lonely woman, a lovely woman, in a silver dress, in a circus riders silver dress.

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.

Mascots

© Carl Sandburg

I WILL keep you and bring hands to hold you against a great hunger.
I will run a spear in you for a great gladness to die with.
I will stab you between the ribs of the left side with a great love worth remembering.

Losses

I HAVE love
And a child,
A banjo
And shadows.

Loin Cloth

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,

Let Love Go On

LET it go on; let the love of this hour be poured out till all the answers are made, the last dollar spent and the last blood gone.

Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets by, time wins.

Legends

CLOWNS DYINGFIVE circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind rouge-red lips and powder-white face.

STEAMBOAT BILLWhen the boilers of the Robert E. Lee exploded, a steamboat winner of many races on the Mississippi went to the bottom of the river and never again saw the wharves of Natchez and New Orleans.
And a legend lives on that two gamblers were blown toward the sky and during their journey laid bets on which of the two would go higher and which would be first to set foot on the turf of the earth again.

Last Answers

I wrote a poem on the mist
And a woman asked me what I meant by it.
I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,
how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening
into points of mystery quivering with color.

In a Back Alley

REMEMBRANCE for a great man is this.
The newsies are pitching pennies.
And on the copper disk is the man's face.
Dead lover of boys, what do you ask for now?