In “Sumach and Birds,” Carl Sandburg speaks to someone whose beauty is bound up with early autumn—a purple, pigeon-colored dusk, red sumac along the road, red haws bursting into crimson. The speaker says that if this person had never arrived with all that intensity, if their beauty had never “crushed” him, he would still have the world’s birds: acres of flying wings, gray homeward flocks, voices riding the north wind. The tone is not bitter. It is full of awe and a little sadness, as if the speaker is admitting how deeply one vivid human or natural beauty can overtake him. The second half feels larger and lonelier, but still alive with motion. The poem leaves a mood of autumn longing—love and loss pressed close together, with the birds as a kind of rough comfort.
Sumach and Birds — Summary
If you never came with a pigeon rainbow purple Shining in the six o'clock September dusk: If the red sumach on the autumn roads Never danced on the flame of your eyelashes : If the red-haws never burst in a million Crimson fingertwists of your heartcrying: If all this beauty of yours never crushed me Then there are many flying acres of birds for me, Many drumming gray wings going home I shall see, Many crying voices riding the north wind.