He sat bending his head over a plate
Putting soup in his mouth with a spoon.
Birds and Bugs
LAUGHING CORN
There was a high majestic fooling
Day before yesterday in the yellow corn.
And day after tomorrow in the yellow corn
There will be a high majestic fooling.
The ears ripen in late summer
And come on with a conquering laughter,
Come on with a high and conquering laughter.
The long-tailed blackbirds are hoarse.
One of the smaller blackbirds chitters on a stalk
And a spot of red is on its shoulder
And I never heard its name in my life.
Some of the ears are bursting.
A white juice works inside.
Cornsilk creeps in the end and dangles in the wind.
Always—I never knew it any other way—
The wind and the corn talk things over together.
And the rain and the corn and the sun and the corn
Talk things over together.
Over the road is the farmhouse.
The siding is white and a green blind is slung loose.
It will not be fixed till the corn is husked.
The farmer and his wife talk things over together.
BUG SPOTS
This bug carries spots on his back.
Last summer he carried these spots.
Now it is spring and he is back here again
With a domino design over his wings.
All winter he has been in a bedroom,
In a hole, in a hammock, hung up, stuck away,
Stashed while the snow blew over
The wind and the dripping icicles,
The tunnels of the frost.
Now he has errands again in a rotten stump.
PEARL COBWEBS
from SMOKE AND STEEL
Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain,
in only a flicker of wind,
are caught and lost and never known again.
A pool of moonshine comes and waits,
but never waits long: the wind picks up
loose gold like this and is gone.
A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed
on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine;
sleeps slant-eyed a million years,
sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths,
a shirt of gathering sod and loam.
The wind never bothers . . . a bar of steel.
The wind picks only . . . pearl cobwebs . . . pools of moonshine.
SPRING GRASS
Spring grass, there is a dance to be danced for you.
Come up, spring grass, if only for young feet.
Come up, spring grass, young feet ask you.
Smell of the young spring grass,
You’re a mascot riding on the wind horses.
You came to my nose and spiffed me. This is your lucky year.
Young spring grass just after the winter,
Shoots of the big green whisper of the year,
Come up, if only for young feet.
Come up, young feet ask you.
PEOPLE OF THE EAVES, I WISH YOU GOOD MORNING
The wrens have troubles like us. The house of a wren will not run itself any more than the house of a man.
They chatter the same as two people in a flat where the laundry came back with the shirts of another man and the shimmy of another woman.
The shirt of a man wren and the shimmy of a woman wren are a trouble in the wren house. It is this or something else back of this chatter a spring morning.
Trouble goes so quick in the wren house. Now they are hopping wren jigs beaten off in a high wren staccato time.
People of the eaves, I wish you good morning, I wish you a thousand thanks.
JUST BEFORE APRIL CAME
The snow-piles in dark places are gone.
Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear.
The gravel of all shallow places shines.
A white pigeon reels and somersaults.
Frogs plutter and squdge—and frogs beat
the air with a recurring thin
steel sliver of melody.
Crows go in fives and tens; they march their
black feathers past a blue pool; they
celebrate an old festival.
A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits
on my hand washing his forelegs.
I might ask: Who are these people?
MAROON WITH SILVER FROST
Whispers of maroon came on the little river.
The slashed hill took up the sunset,
Took up the evening star.
The brambles crackled in a fire call
To the beginnings of frost.
“It is almost night,” the maroon whispered in widening blood rings on the little river.
“It is night,” the sunset, the evening star said later over the hump of the slashed hill.
“What if it is?” the brambles crackled across the sure silver beginnings of frost.
RAT RIDDLES
There was a gray rat looked at me
with green eyes out of a rathole.
“Hello, rat,” I said,
“Is there any chance for me
to get on to the language of the rats?”
And the green eyes blinked at me,
blinked from a gray rat’s rathole.
“Come again,” I said,
“Slip me a couple of riddles;
there must be riddles among the rats.”
And the green eyes blinked at me
and a whisper came from the gray rathole:
“Who do you think you are and why is a rat?
Where did you sleep last night and why do you sneeze on Tuesdays? And why is the grave of a rat no deeper than the grave of a man?”
And the tail of a green-eyed rat
Whipped and was gone at a gray rathole.
CRICKET MARCH
As the corn becomes higher
The one shrill of a summer cricket
Becomes two and ten
With a shrilling surer than last month.
As the banners of the corn
Come to their highest flying in the wind,
The summer crickets come to a marching army.
SPLINTER
The voice of the last cricket
across the first frost
is one kind of good-by.
It is so thin a splinter of singing.
EVENING WATERFALL
What was the name you called me?—
And why did you go so soon?
The crows lift their caw on the wind,
And the wind changed and was lonely.
The warblers cry their sleepy-songs
Across the valley gloaming,
Across the cattle-horns of early stars.
Feathers and people in the crotch of a treetop
Throw an evening waterfall of sleepy-songs.
What was the name you called me?—
And why did you go so soon?
SMALL HOMES
The green bug sleeps in the white lily ear.
The red bug sleeps in the white magnolia.
Shiny wings, you are choosers of color.
You have taken your summer bungalows wisely.
Night
MILK-WHITE MOON, PUT THE COWS TO SLEEP
Milk-white moon, put the cows to sleep.
Since five o’clock in the morning,
Since they stood up out of the grass,
Where they slept on their knees and hocks,
They have eaten grass and given their milk
And eaten grass again and given milk,
And kept their heads and teeth at the earth’s face.
Now they are looking at you, milk-white moon.
Carelessly as they look at the level landscapes,
Carelessly as they look at a pail of new whi
te milk,
They are looking at you, wondering not at all, at all,
If the moon is the skim face top of a pail of milk,
Wondering not at all, carelessly looking.
Put the cows to sleep, milk-white moon,
Put the cows to sleep.
GOOD NIGHT
Many ways to spell good night.
Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July
spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
and then go out.
Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.
Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields to a razorback hill.
It is easy to spell good night.
Many ways to spell good night.
LUMBER YARD POOLS AT SUNSET
The rain pools in the old lumber yard
change as the sky changes.
No sooner do lightfoot sunset maroons
cross the west than they cross the rain
pools too.
So now every blue has a brother
and every singing silver a sister.
SUMMER STARS
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,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
So lazy and hum-strumming.
NOCTURN CABBAGE
Cabbages catch at the moon.
It is late summer, no rain, the pack of the soil cracks open, it is a hard summer.
In the night the cabbages catch at the moon, the leaves drip silver, the rows of cabbages are series of little silver waterfalls in the moon.
SLEEPYHEADS
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.
Old men sleep. In chimney corners, in rocking chairs, at wood stoves, steam radiators. They talk and forget and nod and are out of talk with closed eyes. Forgetting to live. Knowing the time has come useless for them to live. Old eagles and old dogs run and fly in the dreams.
Babies sleep. In flannels the papoose faces, the bambino noses, and dodo, dodo the song of many matushkas. Babies—a leaf on a tree in the spring sun. A nub of a new thing sucks the sap of a tree in the sun, yes a new thing, a what-is-it? A left hand stirs, an eyelid twitches, the milk in the belly bubbles and gets to be blood and a left hand and an eyelid. Sleep is a maker of makers.
SMOKE ROSE GOLD
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.
Night takes the dome and the river, the sun and the smoke rose gold,
The haze changes from sunset to star.
The pour of a thin silver struggles against the dark.
A star might call: It’s a long way across.
EARLY MOON
The baby moon, a canoe, a silver papoose canoe, sails and sails in the Indian west.
A ring of silver foxes, a mist of silver foxes, sit and sit around the Indian moon.
One yellow star for a runner, and rows of blue stars for more runners, keep a line of watchers.
O foxes, baby moon, runners, you are the panel of memory, fire-white writing tonight of the Red Man’s dreams.
Who squats, legs crossed and arms folded, matching its look against the moon-face, the star-faces, of the West?
Who are the Mississippi Valley ghosts, of copper foreheads, riding wiry ponies in the night?—no bridles, love-arms on the pony necks, riding in the night a long old trail?
Why do they always come back when the silver foxes sit around the early moon, a silver papoose, in the Indian west?
SUNSETS
There are sunsets who whisper a good-by.
It is a short dusk and a way for stars.
Prairie and sea rim they go level and even
And the sleep is easy.
There are sunsets who dance good-by.
They fling scarves half to the arc,
To the arc then and over the arc.
Ribbons at the ears, sashes at the hips,
Dancing, dancing good-by. And here sleep
Tosses a little with dreams.
VALLEY SONG
The sunset swept
To the valley’s west, you remember.
The frost was on.
A star burnt blue.
We were warm, you remember,
And counted the rings on a moon.
The sunset swept
To the valley’s west
And was gone in a big dark door of stars.
End Thoughts
HAPPINESS
I asked 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.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.
PRAYERS OF STEEL
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars.
TRINITY PLACE
The grave of Alexander Hamilton is in Trinity yard at the end of Wall Street.
The grave of Robert Fulton likewise is in Trinity yard where Wall Street stops.
And in this yard stenogs, bundle boys, scrubwomen, sit on the tombstones, and walk on the grass of graves, speaking of war and weather, of babies, wages and love.
An iron picket fence . . . and streaming thousands along Broadway sidewalks . . . straw hats, faces, legs . . . a singing, talking, hustling river . . . down the great street that ends with a Sea.
. . . easy is the sleep of Alexander Hamilton.
. . . easy is the sleep of Robert Fulton.
. . . easy are the great governments and the great steamboats.
DO YOU WANT AFFIDAVITS?
There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea.
Do you want affidavits?
There’s a man in the moon with money for you.
Do you want affidavits?
There are ten dancing girls in a sea-chamber off Nantucket waiting for you.
There are tall candles in Timbuctoo burning penance for you.
There are—anything else?
Speak now—for now we stand amid the great wishing windows—and the law says we are free to be wishing all this week at the windows.
Shall I raise my right hand and swear to you in the monotone of a notary public? this is “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
Wind Song
To John Carl and Karlen Paula
Dear young folks:
Some poems may please you for half a minute & you don’t care whether you keep them or not. Other poems you may feel to be
priceless & you hug them to your heart & keep them for sure. Here in this book poems of each kind may be found: you do the finding.
I sign this book for you saying love & blessings: may luck stars ever be over you.
Carl Sandburg
New Poems
BLUEBIRD, WHAT DO YOU FEED ON?
Bluebird, what do you feed on?
It is true you gobble up worms, you swallow bugs,
And your bill picks up corn, seed, berries.
This is only part of the answer.
Your feathers have captured a piece of smooth sky.
Your wings are burnished with lake-morning blue.
It is not a worm blue nor a bug blue nor the blue
Of corn or berry you shine with.
Bluebird, we come to you for facts, for valuable
Information, for secret reports.
Bluebird, tell us, what do you feed on?
The Sandburg Treasury Page 20