The Sandburg Treasury
Page 22
Have you ever seen Wendy?
Have you ever seen her sweep
Keeping her black eyes on you
keeping you eyeswept?
CHILD MARGARET
The child Margaret begins to write numbers on a Saturday morning, the first numbers formed under her wishing child fingers.
All the numbers come well-born, shaped in figures assertive for a frieze in a child’s room.
Both 1 and 7 are straightforward, military, filled with lunge and attack, erect in shoulder-straps.
The 6 and 9 salute as dancing sisters, elder and younger, and 2 is a trapeze actor swinging to handclaps.
All the numbers are well-born, only 3 has a hump on its back and 8 is knock-kneed.
The child Margaret kisses all once and gives two kisses to 3 and 8.
(Each number is a brand-new rag doll. . . . O in the wishing fingers . . . millions of rag dolls, millions and millions of new rag dolls!!)
PAPER I
Paper is two kinds, to write on, to wrap with.
If you like to write, you write.
If you like to wrap, you wrap.
Some papers like writers, some like wrappers.
Are you a writer or a wrapper?
PAPER II
I write what I know on one side of the paper and what I don’t know on the other.
Fire likes dry paper and wet paper laughs at fire.
Empty paper sacks say, “Put something in me, what are we waiting for?”
Paper sacks packed to the limit say, “We hope we don’t bust.”
Paper people like to meet other paper people.
DOORS
An open door says, “Come in.”
A shut door says, “Who are you?”
Shadows and ghosts go through shut doors.
If a door is shut and you want it shut, why open it?
If a door is open and you want it open, why shut it?
Doors forget but only doors know what it is doors forget.
Little Album
NAMES
from Prologue to THE FAMILY OF MAN
There is only one horse on the earth
and his name is All Horses.
There is only one bird in the air
and his name is All Wings.
There is only one fish in the sea
and his name is All Fins.
There is only one man in the world
and his name is All Men.
There is only one woman in the world
and her name is All Women.
There is only one child in the world
and the child’s name is All Children.
There is only one Maker in the world
and His children cover the earth
and they are named All God’s Children.
PROVERBS
from THE PEOPLE, YES
We’ll see what we’ll see.
Time is a great teacher.
Today me and tomorrow maybe you.
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
What is bitter to stand against today may be sweet to remember tomorrow.
Fine words butter no parsnips. Moonlight dries no mittens.
Whether the stone bumps the jug or the jug bumps the stone it is bad for the jug.
One hand washes the other and both wash the face.
Better leave the child’s nose dirty than wring it off.
We all belong to the same big family and have the same smell.
Handling honey, tar or dung some of it sticks to the fingers.
The liar comes to believe his own lies.
He who burns himself must sit on the blisters.
God alone understands fools.
∗ ∗ ∗
The sea has fish for every man.
Every blade of grass has its share of dew.
The longest day must have its end.
Man’s life? A candle in the wind, hoar-frost
on stone.
Nothing more certain than death and nothing
more uncertain than the hour.
Men live like birds together in a wood; when
the time comes each takes his flight.
As wave follows wave, so new men take old
men’s places.
HOME
from POEMS DONE ON A LATE NIGHT CAR
Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:
I heard it in the air of one night when I listened
To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness.
GOLDWING MOTH
A goldwing moth is between the scissors and the ink bottle on the desk.
Last night it flew hundreds of circles around a glass bulb and a flame wire.
The wings are a soft gold; it is the gold of illuminated initials in manuscripts of the medieval monks.
SO TO SPEAK
Dreams, graves, pools, growing
flowers, cornfields—these are
silent, so to speak.
Northwest blizzards, sea rocks
apounding in high wind, southeast
sleet after a thaw—these are heard,
so to speak.
CIRCLES
from THE PEOPLE, YES
The white man drew a small circle in the sand
and told the red man, “This is what the Indian
knows,” and drawing a big circle around the
small one, “This is what the white man knows.”
The Indian took the stick and swept an immense
ring around both circles: “This is where the
white man and the red man know nothing.”
MY PEOPLE
My people are gray,
pigeon gray, dawn gray, storm gray.
I call them beautiful,
and I wonder where they are going.
BASKET
Speak, sir, and be wise.
Speak choosing your words, sir,
like an old woman over a bushel
of apples.
HATS
Hats, where do you belong?
what is under you?
On the rim of a skyscraper’s forehead
I looked down and saw: hats: fifty thousand hats:
Swarming with a noise of bees and sheep, cattle and waterfalls,
Stopping with a silence of sea grass, a silence of prairie corn.
Hats: tell me your high hopes.
UNDER A HAT RIM
While the hum and the hurry
Of passing footfalls
Beat in my ear like the restless surf
Of a wind-blown sea,
A soul came to me
Out of the look on a face.
Eyes like a lake
Where a storm-wind roams
Caught me from under
The rim of a hat.
I thought of a midsea wreck
and bruised fingers clinging
to a broken state-room door.
HITS AND RUNS
I remember the Chillicothe ball players grappling the Rock Island ball players in a sixteen-inning game ended by darkness.
And the shoulders of the Chillicothe players were a red smoke against the sundown and the shoulders of the Rock Island players were a yellow smoke against the sundown.
And the umpire’s voice was hoarse calling balls and strikes and outs and the umpire’s throat fought in the dust for a song.
NEW HAMPSHIRE AGAIN
I remember black winter waters,
I remember thin white birches,
I remember sleepy twilight hills,
I remember riding across New Hampshire lengthways.
I remember a station named “Halcyon,” a brakeman calling to passengers “Halcyon!! Halcyon!!”
I remember having heard the gold diggers dig out only enough for weddings rings.
I remember a stately child telling me her father gets letters addressed “Robert Frost, New Hampshire.”
I remember an old Irish saying, “His face is like
a fiddle and every one who sees him must love him.”
I have one remember, two remembers, ten remembers; I have a little handkerchief bundle of remembers.
One early evening star just over a cradle moon,
One dark river with a spatter of later stars caught,
One funnel of a motorcar headlight up a hill,
One team of horses hauling a bobsled load of wood,
One boy on skis picking himself up after a tumble—
I remember one and a one and a one riding across New Hampshire lengthways: I have a little handkerchief bundle of remembers.
NIAGARA
from THE PEOPLE, YES
The tumblers of the rapids go white, go green,
go changing over the gray, the brown, the rocks.
The fight of the water, the stones,
the fight makes a foam laughter
before the last look over the long slide
down the spread of a sheen in the straight fall.
Then the growl, the chutter,
down under the boom and the muffle,
the hoo hoi deep,
the hoo hoi down,
this is Niagara.
CHEAP BLUE
Hill blue among the leaves in summer,
Hill blue among the branches in winter—
Light sea blue at the sand beaches in winter,
Deep sea blue in the deep deep waters—
Prairie blue, mountain blue—
Who can pick a pocketful of these blues, a handkerchief of these blues,
And go walking, talking, walking as though
God gave them a lot of loose change
For spending money, to throw at the birds,
To flip into the tin cups of blind men?
MOTHER AND CHILD
from THE PEOPLE, YES
“I love you,”
said a great mother.
“I love you for what you are
knowing so well what you are.
And I love you more yet, child,
deeper yet than ever, child,
for what you are going to be,
knowing so well you are going far,
knowing your great works are ahead,
ahead and beyond,
yonder and far over yet.”
Corn Belt
IMPROVED FARM LAND
Tall timber stood here once, here on a corn belt farm along the Monon.
Here the roots of a half mile of trees dug their runners deep in the loam for a grip and a hold against wind storms.
Then the axmen came and the chips flew to the zing of steel and handle—the lank railsplitters cut the big ones first, the beeches and the oaks, then the brush.
Dynamite, wagons and horses took the stumps—the plows sunk their teeth in—now it is first class corn land—improved property—and the hogs grunt over the fodder crops.
It would come hard now for this half mile of improved farm land along the Monon corn belt, on a piece of Grand Prairie, to remember once it had a great singing family of trees.
PLOWBOY
After the last red sunset glimmer,
Black on the line of a low hill rise,
Formed into moving shadows, I saw
A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray,
Plowing in the dusk the last furrow.
The turf had a gleam of brown,
And smell of soil was in the air,
And, cool and moist, a haze of April.
I shall remember you long,
Plowboy and horses against the sky in shadow.
I shall remember you and the picture
You made for me,
Turning the turf in the dusk
And haze of an April gloaming.
FROG SONGS
The silver burbles of the frogs wind and swirl.
The lines of their prongs swing up in a spray.
They cut the air with bird line curves.
The eye sees nothing, the ear is filled, the head remembers
The beat of the swirl of frog throat silver prongs
In the early springtime when eggs open, when feet learn,
When the crying of the water begins a new year.
SHE OPENS THE BARN DOOR EVERY MORNING
Open the barn door, farm woman,
It is time for the cows to be milked.
Their udders are full from the sleep night.
Open the door with your right hand shuttling a cleat,
Your left hand pulling a handle.
The smell of the barn is let out to the pastures.
Dawn lets itself in at the open door.
A cow left out in the barnyard all the night
Looks on as though you do this every morning.
Open the barn door, farm woman, you do it
As you have done it five hundred times.
As a sleep woman heavy with the earth,
Clean as a milk pail washed in the sun,
You open the barn door a half mile away
And a cow almost turns its head and looks on.
SUMMER MORNING
from PRAIRIE
A wagonload of radishes on a summer morning.
Sprinkles of dew on the crimson-purple balls.
The farmer on the seat dangles the reins on the rumps of dapple-gray horses.
The farmer’s daughter with a basket of eggs dreams of a new hat to wear to the county fair.
BROWN GOLD
The time of the brown gold comes softly.
Oat shocks are alive in brown gold belts, the short and the shambling oat shocks sit on the stubble and straw.
The timothy hay, the fodder corn, the cabbage and the potatoes, across their leaves are footsteps.
There is a bold green up over the cracks in the corn rows where the crickets go crisscross errands, where the bugs carry packages.
Flutter and whirr, you birdies, you newcomers in lines and sashes, tellers of harvest weather on the way, belts of brown gold coming softly.
It is very well the old time streamers take up the old time gold haze against the western timber line.
It is the old time again when months and birds tell each other, “Oh, very well,” and repeat it where the fields and the timber lines meet in belts of brown gold hazes, “Oh, very well, Oh, very well.”
RIPE CORN
The wind blows. The corn leans. The corn leaves go rustling. The march time and the windbeat is on October drums. The stalks of fodder bend all one way, the way the last windstorm passed.
“Put on my winter clothes; get me an ulster; a yellow ulster to lay down in January and shut my eyes and cover my ears in snow drifts.”
The wind blows. The corn leans. The fodder is russet. October says to the leaves, “Rustle now to the last lap, to the last leg of the year.”
CORNHUSKERS
from PRAIRIE
The frost loosens cornhusks.
The sun, the rain, the wind
loosen cornhusks.
The men and women are helpers.
They are all cornhuskers together.
I see them late in the western evening
in a smoke-red dust.
HAYSTACKS
from PRAIRIE
After the sunburn of the day
handling a pitchfork at a hayrack,
after the eggs and biscuit and coffee,
the pearl-gray haystacks
in the gloaming
are cool prayers
to the harvest hands.
HARVEST SUNSET
Red gold of pools,
Sunset furrows six o’clock,
And the farmer done in the fields
And the cows in the barns with bulging udders.
Take the cows and the farmer,
Take the barns and bulging udders.
Leave the red gold of pools
And sunset furrows six o’clock.
The farmer’s wife is singing.
The farmer’s boy is whistling.
I wash my hands in red
gold of pools.
PRAIRIE BARN
from THE PEOPLE, YES
For sixty years the pine lumber barn
had held cows, horses, hay, harness, tools, junk,
amid the prairie winds of Knox County, Illinois
and the corn crops came and went, plows and wagons,
and hands milked, hands husked and harnessed
and held the leather reins of horse teams
in dust and dog days, in late fall sleet
till the work was done that fall.
And the barn was a witness, stood and saw it all.
“That old barn on your place, Charlie,
was nearly falling last time I saw it,
how is it now?”
“I got some poles to hold it on the east side
and the wind holds it up on the west.”
LIMITED CROSSING WISCONSIN
from PRAIRIE
A headlight searches a snowstorm.
A funnel of white light shoots from over the pilot of the Pioneer Limited crossing Wisconsin.
In the morning hours, in the dawn,
The sun puts out the stars of the sky
And the headlight of the Limited train.
The fireman waves his hand to a country school teacher on a bobsled.
A boy, yellow hair, red scarf and mittens, on the bobsled, in his lunch box a pork chop sandwich and a V of gooseberry pie.