War poems
/ page 469 of 504 /
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
North Atlantic
© Carl Sandburg
WHEN the sea is everywhere
from horizon to horizon ..
when the salt and blue
fill a circle of horizons ..
Man, the Man-Hunter
© Carl Sandburg
I SAW Man, the man-hunter,
Hunting with a torch in one hand
And a kerosene can in the other,
Hunting with guns, ropes, shackles.
Loam
© Carl Sandburg
IN the loam we sleep,
In the cool moist loam,
To the lull of years that pass
And the break of stars,
Kin
© Carl Sandburg
BROTHER, I am fire
Surging under the ocean floor.
I shall never meet you, brother--
Not for years, anyhow;
Killers
© Carl Sandburg
I AM singing to you
Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
Hard as a man in handcuffs,
Held where he cannot move:
Jack London and O. Henry
© Carl Sandburg
BOTH were jailbirds; no speechmakers at all; speaking best with one foot on a brass rail; a beer glass in the left hand and the right hand employed for gestures.
And both were lights snuffed out
no warning
no lingering:
Who knew the hearts of these boozefighters?
It Is Much
© Carl Sandburg
Women of night life amid the lights
Where the line of your full, round throats
Matches in gleam the glint of your eyes
And the ring of your heart-deep laughter:
It is much to be warm and sure of to-morrow.
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."
Evening Waterfall
© Carl Sandburg
WHAT was the name you called me?
And why did you go so soon?
The crows lift their caw on the wind,
Clean Curtains
© Carl Sandburg
NEW neighbors came to the corner house at Congress and Green streets.
The look of their clean white curtains was the same as the rim of a nuns bonnet.
Calls
© Carl Sandburg
BECAUSE I have called to you
as the flame flamingo calls,
or the want of a spotted hawk
is called
And They Obey
© Carl Sandburg
SMASH down the cities.
Knock the walls to pieces.
Break the factories and cathedrals, warehouses
and homes
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. E. F.
© Carl Sandburg
THERE will be a rusty gun on the wall, sweetheart,
The rifle grooves curling with flakes of rust.
A spider will make a silver string nest in the darkest, warmest corner of it.
The trigger and the range-finder, they too will be rusty.
Wilderness
© Carl Sandburg
THERE is a wolf in me
fangs pointed for tearing gashes
a red tongue for raw meat
and the hot lapping of bloodI keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fox in me
a silver-gray fox
I sniff and guess
I pick things out of the wind and air
I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers
I circle and loop and double-cross.
Monotone
© Carl Sandburg
The monotone of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.
Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind
© Carl Sandburg
The past is a bucket of ashes. 1THE WOMAN named To-morrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth
and takes her time
and does her hair the way she wants it
Fish Crier
© Carl Sandburg
I KNOW a Jew fish crier down on Maxwell Street with a
voice like a north wind blowing over corn stubble
in January.
He dangles herring before prospective customers evincing
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.
