Women poems
/ page 133 of 142 /
Brass Keys
© Carl Sandburg
JOY
weaving two violet petals for a coat lapel
painting on a slab of night sky a Christ face
slipping new brass keys into rusty iron locks and shouldering till at last the door gives and we are in a new room
forever and ever violet petals, slabs, the Christ face, brass keys and new rooms.
are we near or far?
is there anything else?
who comes back?
and why does love ask nothing and give all? and why is love rare as a tailed comet shaking guesses out of men at telescopes ten feet long? why does the mystery sit with its chin on the lean forearm of women in gray eyes and women in hazel eyes?
Blue Island Intersection
© Carl Sandburg
SIX street ends come together here.
They feed people and wagons into the center.
In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags,
Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies.
Balloon Faces
© Carl Sandburg
THE BALLOONS hang on wires in the Marigold Gardens.
They spot their yellow and gold, they juggle their blue and red, they float their faces on the face of the sky.
Balloon face eaters sit by hundreds reading the eat cards, asking, What shall we eat?and the waiters, Have you ordered? they are sixty ballon faces sifting white over the tuxedoes.
Poets, lawyers, ad men, mason contractors, smartalecks discussing educated jackasses, here they put crabs into their balloon faces.
Among the Red Guns
© Carl Sandburg
AMONG the red guns,
In the hearts of soldiers
Running free blood
In the long, long campaign:
Dreams go on.
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.
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.
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
Testimony Regarding a Ghost
© Carl Sandburg
THE ROSES slanted crimson sobs
On the night sky hair of the women,
And the long light-fingered men
Spoke to the dark-haired women,
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
Onion Days
© Carl Sandburg
MRS. GABRIELLE GIOVANNITTI comes along Peoria Street
every morning at nine o'clock
With kindling wood piled on top of her head, her eyes
looking straight ahead to find the way for her old feet.
Nights Nothings Again
© Carl Sandburg
WHO knows what I know
when I have asked the night questions
and the night has answered nothing
only the old answers?
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
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,
Blue Ridge
© Carl Sandburg
BORN a million years ago you stay here a million years
watching the women come and live and be laid away
you and they thin-gray thin-dusk lovely.
So it goes: either the early morning lights are lovely or the early morning star.
I am glad I have seen racehorses, women, mountains.
Our Prayer of Thanks
© Carl Sandburg
For the gladness here where the sun is shining at
evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.
Child of the Romans
© Carl Sandburg
THE dago shovelman sits by the railroad track
Eating a noon meal of bread and bologna.
A train whirls by, and men and women at tables
Alive with red roses and yellow jonquils,
The Harbor
© Carl Sandburg
PASSING through huddled and ugly walls
By doorways where women
Looked from their hunger-deep eyes,
Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,
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.
Happiness
© Carl Sandburg
I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
Chicago
© Carl Sandburg
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;
