Section: «Poems»
Verse (ancient Greek ὁ στίχος — row, structure), a term in versification used in several meanings:
artistic speech organized by division into rhythmically commensurate segments; poetry in the narrow sense; in particular, it implies the properties of versification of a particular tradition ("antique verse", "Akhmatova's verse", etc.);
a line of poetic text organized according to a certain rhythmic pattern ("My uncle of the most honest rules").
The Right To Grief
To Certain Poets About to DieTake your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow,Over the dead child of a millionaire,And the pity of Death refusing..
© Carl Sandburg
The Red Son
I love your faces I saw the many yearsI drank your milk and filled my mouthWith your home talk, slept in your houseAnd was one of you.But a fire..
© Carl Sandburg
The Plowboy
AFTER the last red sunset glimmer,Black on the line of a low hill rise,Formed into moving shadows, I sawA plowboy and two horses lined against the..
© Carl Sandburg
The People, Yes
Lincoln?He was a mystery in smoke and flagsSaying yes to the smoke, yes to the flags,Yes to the paradoxes of democracy,Yes to the hopes of..
© Carl Sandburg
The Noon Hour
She sits in the dust at the wallsAnd makes cigars,Bending at the benchWith fingers wage-anxious,Changing her sweat for the day’s pay.Now the noon..
© Carl Sandburg
The Mist
I am the mist, the impalpable mist,Back of the thing you seek.My arms are long,Long as the reach of time and space.Some toil and toil..
© Carl Sandburg
The Mayor Of Gary
I asked the mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.And the mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal time on the job in Garythan any..
© Carl Sandburg
The Long Shadow of Lincoln: A Litany
(We can succeed only by concert. . . . The dogmas of the quiet past areinadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty..
© Carl Sandburg
The Liars
(March, 1919)A LIAR goes in fine clothes.A liar goes in rags.A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells..
© Carl Sandburg
The Lawyers Know Too Much
The lawyers, Bob, know too much.They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.They know it all, what a dead hand wrote,A stiff dead hand and its..
© Carl Sandburg
The Junk Man
I am glad God saw DeathAnd gave Death a job taking care of all who are tired of living:When all the wheels in a clock are worn and slow and the..
© Carl Sandburg
The Has-Been
A stone face higher than six horses stood five thousand years gazing at the worldseeming to clutch a secret.A boy passes and throws a niggerhead that..
© Carl Sandburg
The Harbor
Passing through huddled and ugly wallsBy doorways where womenLooked from their hunger-deep eyes,Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,Out from the..
© Carl Sandburg
The Hangman At Home
What does a hangman think aboutWhen he goes home at night from work?When he sits down with his wife andChildren for a cup of coffee and aPlate of ham..
© Carl Sandburg
The Hammer
I have seenThe old gods goAnd the new gods come.Day by dayAnd year by yearThe idols fallAnd the idols rise.TodayI worship the hammer.
© Carl Sandburg
The Great Hunt
I cannot tell you now;When the wind’s drive and whirlBlow me along no longer,And the wind’s a whisper at last—Maybe I’ll tell you then—some other..
© Carl Sandburg
The Four Brothers
MAKE war songs out of these;Make chants that repeat and weave.Make rhythms up to the ragtime chatter of the machine guns;Make slow-booming psalms up..
© Carl Sandburg
The Answer
You have spoken the answer.A child searches far sometimesInto the red dustOn a dark rose leafAnd so you have gone farFor the answer is:Silence.In the..
© Carl Sandburg
Testimony Regarding A Ghost
THE ROSES slanted crimson sobsOn the night sky hair of the women,And the long light-fingered menSpoke to the dark-haired women,'Nothing lovelier..
© Carl Sandburg
Testament
I GIVE the undertakers permission to haul my bodyto the graveyard and to lay away all, the head, thefeet, the hands, all: I know there is something..
© Carl Sandburg
Telegram
I SAW a telegram handed a two hundred pound man at a desk. And the littlescrap of paper charged the air like a set of crystals in a chemist's tube to..
© Carl Sandburg
Tawny
THESE are the tawny days: your face comes back.The grapes take on purple: the sunsets redden early on the trellis.The bashful mornings hurl gray mist..
© Carl Sandburg
Tangibles
(Washington, August, 1918)I HAVE seen this city in the day and the sun.I have seen this city in the night and the moon.And in the night and the moon..
© Carl Sandburg
Swirl
A SWIRL in the air where your head was once, here.You walked under this tree, spoke to a moon for meI might almost stand here and believe you alive.
© Carl Sandburg
Sunset From Omaha Hotel Window
Into the blue river hillsThe red sun runners goAnd the long sand changesAnd to-day is a gonerAnd to-day is not worth haggling over.Here in OmahaThe..
© Carl Sandburg