Poems begining by S
/ page 258 of 287 /
Self-Portrait, 1969
© Frank Bidart
He's still young--; thirty, but looks younger--
or does he?... In the eyes and cheeks, tonight,
turning in the mirror, he saw his mother,--
puffy; angry; bewildered... Many nights,
Swirl
© Carl Sandburg
A SWIRL in the air where your head was once, here.
You walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for me
I might almost stand here and believe you alive.
Summer Stars
© Carl Sandburg
BEND low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
Sumach and Birds
© Carl Sandburg
IF you never came with a pigeon rainbow purple
Shining in the six oclock September dusk:
If the red sumach on the autumn roads
Never danced on the flame of your eyelashes:
Subway
© Carl Sandburg
DOWN between the walls of shadow
Where the iron laws insist,
The hunger voices mock.
Style
© Carl Sandburg
STYLE--go ahead talking about style.
You can tell where a man gets his style just
as you can tell where Pavlowa got her legs
or Ty Cobb his batting eye.
Stripes
© Carl Sandburg
POLICEMAN in front of a bank 3 A.M.
lonely.
Policeman State and Madison
high noon
mobs
cars
parcels
lonely.
Woman in suburbs
keeping night watch on a sleeping typhoid patient
only a clock to talk to
lonesome.
Woman selling gloves
bargain day department store
furious crazy-work of many hands slipping in and out of gloves
lonesome.
Streets Too Old
© Carl Sandburg
I WALKED among the streets of an old city and the streets were lean as the throats of hard seafish soaked in salt and kept in barrels many years.
How old, how old, how old, we are:the walls went on saying, street walls leaning toward each other like old women of the people, like old midwives tired and only doing what must be done.
The greatest the city could offer me, a stranger, was statues of the kings, on all corners bronzes of kingsancient bearded kings who wrote books and spoke of Gods love for all peopleand young kings who took forth armies out across the frontiers splitting the heads of their opponents and enlarging their kingdoms.
Strangest of all to me, a stranger in this old city, was the murmur always whistling on the winds twisting out of the armpits and fingertips of the kings in bronze:Is there no loosening? Is this for always?
In an early snowflurry one cried:Pull me down where the tired old midwives no longer look at me, throw the bronze of me to a fierce fire and make me into neckchains for dancing children.
Street Window
© Carl Sandburg
THE PAWN-SHOP man knows hunger,
And how far hunger has eaten the heart
Of one who comes with an old keepsake.
Here are wedding rings and baby bracelets,
Statistics
© Carl Sandburg
NAPOLEON shifted,
Restless in the old sarcophagus
And murmured to a watchguard:
"Who goes there?"
Stars, Songs, Faces
© Carl Sandburg
GATHER the stars if you wish it so.
Gather the songs and keep them.
Gather the faces of women.
Gather for keeping years and years.
Spanish
© Carl Sandburg
FASTEN black eyes on me.
I ask nothing of you under the peach trees,
Fasten your black eyes in my gray with the spear of a storm.
The air under the peach blossoms is a haze of pink.
Southern Pacific
© Carl Sandburg
HUNTINGTON sleeps in a house six feet long.
Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned.
Huntington dreams of ten thousand men saying: Yes, sir.
Soiled Dove
© Carl Sandburg
Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until she
married a corporation lawyer who picked her from
a Ziegfeld chorus.
Before then she never took anybody's money and paid
Snow
© Carl Sandburg
SNOW took us away from the smoke valleys into white mountains, we saw velvet blue cows eating a vermillion grass and they gave us a pink milk.
Snow changes our bones into fog streamers caught by the wind and spelled into many dances.
Smoke Rose Gold
© Carl Sandburg
THE DOME of the capitol looks to the Potomac river.
Out of haze over the sunset,
Out of a smoke rose gold:
One star shines over the sunset.
Smoke and Steel
© Carl Sandburg
SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,
Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
They all go up in a line with a smokestack,
Smoke
© Carl Sandburg
I SIT in a chair and read the newspapers.
Millions of men go to war, acres of them are buried, guns and ships broken, cities burned, villages sent up in smoke, and children where cows are killed off amid hoarse barbecues vanish like finger-rings of smoke in a north wind.
I sit in a chair and read the newspapers.
Slippery
© Carl Sandburg
THE SIX month child
Fresh from the tub
Wriggles in our hands.
This is our fish child.
Give her a nickname: Slippery.
Sleepyheads
© Carl Sandburg
SLEEP is a maker of makers. Birds sleep. Feet cling to a perch. Look at the balance. Let the legs loosen, the backbone untwist, the head go heavy over, the whole works tumbles a done bird off the perch.
Fox cubs sleep. The pointed head curls round into hind legs and tail. It is a ball of red hair. It is a muff waiting. A wind might whisk it in the air across pastures and rivers, a cocoon, a pod of seeds. The snooze of the black nose is in a circle of red hair.
