Poems begining by S
/ page 259 of 287 /
Slants at Buffalo, New York
© Carl Sandburg
A FOREFINGER of stone, dreamed by a sculptor, points to the sky.
It says: This way! this way!
Four lions snore in stone at the corner of the shaft.
Sixteen Months
© Carl Sandburg
ON the lips of the child Janet float changing dreams.
It is a thin spiral of blue smoke,
A morning campfire at a mountain lake.
Singing Nigger
© Carl Sandburg
YOUR bony head, Jazbo, O dock walloper,
Those grappling hooks, those wheelbarrow handlers,
The dome and the wings of you, nigger,
The red roof and the door of you,
Silver Wind
© Carl Sandburg
DO you know how the dream looms? how if summer misses one of us the two of us miss summer
Summer when the lungs of the earth take a long breath for the change to low contralto singing mornings when the green corn leaves first break through the black loam
And another long breath for the silver soprano melody of the moon songs in the light nights when the earth is lighter than a feather, the iron mountains lighter than a goose down
So I shall look for you in the light nights then, in the laughter of slats of silver under a hill hickory.
In the listening tops of the hickories, in the wind motions of the hickory shingle leaves, in the imitations of slow sea water on the shingle silver in the wind
I shall look for you.
Silver Nails
© Carl Sandburg
A MAN was crucified. He came to the city a stranger,
was accused, and nailed to a cross. He lingered hanging.
Laughed at the crowd. "The nails are iron," he
said, "You are cheap. In my country when we crucify
Shirt
© Carl Sandburg
I remember once I ran after you and tagged the fluttering
shirt of you in the wind.
Once many days ago I drank a glassful of something and
the picture of you shivered and slid on top of the
Shenandoah
© Carl Sandburg
IN the Shenandoah Valley, one rider gray and one rider blue, and the sun on the riders wondering.
Piled in the Shenandoah, riders blue and riders gray, piled with shovels, one and another, dust in the Shenandoah taking them quicker than mothers take children done with play.
The blue nobody remembers, the gray nobody remembers, its all old and old nowadays in the Shenandoah.. . .
And all is young, a butter of dandelions slung on the turf, climbing blue flowers of the wishing woodlands wondering: a midnight purple violet claims the sun among old heads, among old dreams of repeating heads of a rider blue and a rider gray in the Shenandoah.
Sheep
© Carl Sandburg
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
Sea-Wash
© Carl Sandburg
THE SEA-WASH never ends.
The sea-wash repeats, repeats.
Only old songs? Is that all the sea knows?
Only the old strong songs?
Is that all?
The sea-wash repeats, repeats.
Savoir Faire
© Carl Sandburg
CAST a bronze of my head and legs and put them on the kings street.
Set the cast of me here alongside Carl XII, making two Carls for the Swedish people and the utlanders to look at between the palace and the Grand Hotel.
The summer sun will shine on both the Carls, and November drizzles wrap the two, one in tall leather boots, one in wool leggins.
Also I place it in the record: the Swedish people may name boats after me or change the name of a long street and give it one of my nicknames.
Sandpipers
© Carl Sandburg
Sandland where the salt water kills the sweet potatoes.
Homes for sandpipersthe script of their feet is on the sea shinglesthey write in the morning, it is gone at noonthey write at noon, it is gone at night.
Pity the land, the sea, the ten mile flats, pity anything but the sandpipers wire legs and feet.
Sand Scribblings
© Carl Sandburg
THE WIND stops, the wind begins.
The wind says stop, begin.
A sea shovel scrapes the sand floor.
Sunset From Omaha Hotel Window
© Carl Sandburg
INTO the blue river hills
The red sun runners go
And the long sand changes
And to-day is a goner
Still Life
© Carl Sandburg
COOL your heels on the rail of an observation car.
Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.
Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun.
A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the post-office never blink an eye.
A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on a black wall map, never blink an eye.
A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his place at a window with the serenity of a bronze statue on a dark night when lovers pass whispering.
Sketch
© Carl Sandburg
THE shadows of the ships
Rock on the crest
In the low blue lustre
Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide.
Shagbark Hickory
© Carl Sandburg
IN the moonlight under a shag-bark hickory tree
Watching the yellow shadows melt in hoof-pools,
Listening to the yes and the no of a womans hands,
I kept my guess why the night was glad.
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.
Salvage
© Carl Sandburg
GUNS on the battle lines have pounded now a year
between Brussels and Paris.
And, William Morris, when I read your old chapter on
the great arches and naves and little whimsical
Soup
© Carl Sandburg
I SAW a famous man eating soup.
I say he was lifting a fat broth
Into his mouth with a spoon.
His name was in the newspapers that day
Skyscraper
© Carl Sandburg
Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the
earth and hold the building to a turning planet.
Hour by hour the girders play as ribs and reach out and
hold together the stone walls and floors.
