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").
Onion Days
Mrs. Gabrielle Giovannitti comes along Peoria Streetevery morning at nine o'clockWith kindling wood piled on top of her head, her eyeslooking..
© Carl Sandburg
On The Way
Little one, you have been buzzing in the books,Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyersAnd amid the educated men of the clubs you..
© Carl Sandburg
On The Breakwater
On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a girl are sitting,She across his knee and they are looking face into faceTalking to each other..
© Carl Sandburg
Omaha
Red barns and red heiffers spot the greengrass circles around Omaha--the farmershaul tanks of cream and wagon-loads ofcheese.Shale hogbacks across..
© Carl Sandburg
Old-Fashioned Requited Love
I HAVE ransacked the encyclopediasAnd slid my fingers among topics and titlesLooking for you.And the answer comes slow.There seems to be no answer.I..
© Carl Sandburg
Old Woman
The owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echoFrom building and battered paving-stone.The headlight scoffs at the mist,And fixes its yellow rays in..
© Carl Sandburg
Old Timers
I am an ancient reluctant conscript.On the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans.On the march of Miltiades' phalanx I had a haft and head;I..
© Carl Sandburg
Old Osawatomie
JOHN BROWN'S body under the morning stars.Six feet of dust under the morning stars.And a panorama of war performs itselfOver the six-foot stage of..
© Carl Sandburg
Offering And Rebuff
I could love youas dry roots love rain.I could hold youas branches in the windbrandish petals.Forgive me for speaking so soon.Let your heart lookon..
© Carl Sandburg
North Atlantic
WHEN the sea is everywherefrom horizon to horizon ..when the salt and bluefill a circle of horizons ..I swear again how I knowthe sea is older than..
© Carl Sandburg
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
Nocturne In A Deserted Brickyard
Stuff of the moonRuns on the lapping sandOut to the longest shadows.Under the curving willows,And round the creep of the wave line,Fluxions of yellow..
© Carl Sandburg
Nights Nothings Again
WHO knows what I knowwhen I have asked the night questionsand the night has answered nothingonly the old answers?Who picked a crimson cryptogram,the..
© Carl Sandburg
Night Stuff
LISTEN a while, the moon is a lovely woman, a lonely woman, lost in a silverdress, lost in a circus rider's silver dress.Listen a while, the lake by..
© Carl Sandburg
Night Movement-New York
IN the night, when the sea-winds take the city in their arms,And cool the loud streets that kept their dust noon and afternoon;In the night, when the..
© Carl Sandburg
Nigger
I am the nigger.Singer of songs,Dancer…Softer than fluff of cotton…Harder than dark earthRoads beaten in the sunBy the bare feet of slaves…Foam of..
© Carl Sandburg
New Feet
EMPTY battlefields keep their phantoms.Grass crawls over old gun wheelsAnd a nodding Canada thistle flings a purpleInto the summer's southwest..
© Carl Sandburg
New Farm Tractor
The rear axles hold the kick of twenty Missouri jackasses.It is in the records of the patent office and the ads there is twenty horse powerpull..
© Carl Sandburg
Never Born
THE TIME has gone by.The child is dead.The child was never even born.Why go on? Why so much as begin?How can we turn the clock back nowAnd not laugh..
© Carl Sandburg
Neighbors
On Forty-first Streetnear Eighth Avenuea frame house wobbles.If houses went on crutchesthis house would beone of the cripples.A sign on the..
© Carl Sandburg
Near Keokuk
THIRTY-TWO Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek.Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water.All one midsummer day ten hours the..
© Carl Sandburg
My People
MY people are gray,pigeon gray, dawn gray, storm gray.I call them beautiful,and I wonder where they are going.
© Carl Sandburg
Murmurings In A Field Hospital
[They picked him up in the grass where he had lain twodays in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs.]Come to me only with playthings now. ...
© Carl Sandburg
Muckers
Twenty men stand watching the muckers.Stabbing the sides of the ditchWhere clay gleams yellow,Driving the blades of their shovelsDeeper and deeper..
© Carl Sandburg
Moonset
LEAVES of poplars pick Japanese prints against the west.Moon sand on the canal doubles the changing pictures.The moon's good-by ends pictures.The..
© Carl Sandburg