Sandburg lines up three portraits of people and places defined by what has accumulated against them. A point of land is remembered for storms and shipwrecks, talked over by sailors at night. An old prizefighter is pointed out on the street for the beatings his face took and the championship belt he once wore. A tall dark man has become local gossip: two divorces, two beautiful wives, a third who looks like the others, and the same murmured “There he goes” in any weather.
The speaker stays cool and reportorial, which gives the poem a wry, slightly mournful feeling. None of these figures is fully known; they are reduced to the damage, rumors, and stories that have piled up around them. “Cumulatives” suggests identity built by repetition—storms, fists, headlines, whispers—until that layer of accumulated meaning is all passers-by can see.