Carl Sandburg watches purple martins sweeping and tumbling above the water in Chicago’s Lincoln Park and speaks to them with admiration and a little envy. Their loops, figure eights, and half-flips look like joyful play, and he imagines that if people could move with that same ease, they too would be “slingers and sliders.” The mood is light and celebratory, full of motion and color—purple and satin blue against sun and water. A man on a bench calls their flying an idle, doctrinaire exploit, but the speaker brushes that aside. The geese ignore them, the man returns to his book, and the martins keep tumbling. The closing lines become a gentle insistence that these birds don’t need to prove anything; their freedom and grace are enough.
Purple Martins — Summary
If we were such and so, the same as these, maybe we too would be slingers and sliders, tumbling half over in the water mirrors, tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun, tumbling our purple numbers. Twirl on, you and your satin blue. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple tumblers you are. Dip and get away From loops into slip-knots, Write your own ciphers and figure eights. It is your wooded island here in Lincoln park. Everybody knows this belongs to you. Five fat geese Eat grass on a sod bank And never count your slinging ciphers, your sliding figure eights, A man on a green paint iron bench, Slouches his feet and sniffs in a book, And looks at you and your loops and slip-knots, And looks at you and your sheaths of satin blue, And slouches again and sniffs in the book, And mumbles : It is an idle and a doctrinaire exploit.
Go on tumbling half over in the water mirrors. Go on tumbling half over at the horse heads of the sun. Be water birds, be air birds. Be these purple tumblers you are.