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").

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

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..

© Carl Sandburg

Subway

Down between the walls of shadowWhere the iron laws insist,The hunger voices mock.The worn wayfaring menWith the hunched and humble shoulders,Throw..

© Carl Sandburg

Style

Style--go ahead talking about style.You can tell where a man gets his style justas you can tell where Pavlowa got her legsor Ty Cobb his batting..

© Carl Sandburg

Stripes

POLICEMAN in front of a bank 3 A.M. ... lonely.Policeman State and Madison ... high noon ... mobs ... cars ... parcels ... lonely.Woman in suburbs..

© Carl Sandburg

Street Window

The pawn-shop man knows hunger,And how far hunger has eaten the heartOf one who comes with an old keepsake.Here are wedding rings and baby..

© Carl Sandburg

Still Life

COOL your heels on the rail of an observation car.Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour.Take in the prairie right and left, rolling..

© Carl Sandburg

Statistics

Napoleon shifted,Restless in the old sarcophagusAnd murmured to a watchguard:"Who goes there?""Twenty-one million men,Soldiers, armies..

© Carl Sandburg

Stars, Songs, Faces

Gather the stars if you wish it so.Gather the songs and keep them.Gather the faces of women.Gather for keeping years and years.And then . . .Loosen..

© Carl Sandburg

Splinter

The voice of the last cricketacross the first frostis one kind of good-by.It is so thin a splinter of singing.

© Carl Sandburg

Spanish

FASTEN black eyes on me.I ask nothing of you under the peach trees,Fasten your black eyes in my gray with the spear of a storm.The air under the..

© Carl Sandburg

Southern Pacific

HUNTINGTON sleeps in a house six feet long.Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned.Huntington dreams of ten thousand men saying: Yes..

© Carl Sandburg

Soiled Dove

Let us be honest; the lady was not a harlot until shemarried a corporation lawyer who picked her froma Ziegfeld chorus.Before then she never took..

© Carl Sandburg

Snow

SNOW took us away from the smoke valleys into white mountains, we saw velvetblue cows eating a vermillion grass and they gave us a pink milk.Snow..

© Carl Sandburg

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..

© Carl Sandburg

Smoke And Steel

SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,They all go up in a line..

© Carl Sandburg

Smoke

I SIT in a chair and read the newspapers.Millions of men go to war, acres of them are buried, guns and ships broken, citiesburned, villages sent up..

© Carl Sandburg

Slippery

THE SIX month childFresh from the tubWriggles in our hands.This is our fish child.Give her a nickname: Slippery.

© Carl Sandburg

Sleepyheads

SLEEP is a maker of makers. Birds sleep. Feet cling to a perch. Look at thebalance. Let the legs loosen, the backbone untwist, the head go heavy..

© Carl Sandburg

Slants At Buffalo, New York

A FOREFINGER of stone, dreamed by a sculptor, points to the sky.It says: This way! this way!Four lions snore in stone at the corner of the shaft.They..

© Carl Sandburg

Skyscraper

By day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun andhas a soul.Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people intoit and they mingle among its..

© Carl Sandburg