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Contemplative, Carl Sandburg, in English Clear filters

ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Home Fires

In a Yiddish eating place on Rivington Street . . . faces . . . coffee spots . . . children kicking at the night stars with bare toes from bare buttocks. They know it is September on Rivington when the red tomaytoes cram the pushcarts, Here the children snozzle at milk bottles, children who have never seen a cow. Here the stranger wonders how so many people remember where they keep home fires.
ContemplativeCarl 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 your hands, let go and say good-by. Let the stars and songs go. Let the faces and years go. Loosen your hands and say good-by.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Just Before April Came

The snow piles in dark places are gone. Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear. The gravel of all shallow places shines. A white pigeon reels and somersaults. Frogs plutter and squdge — and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody. Crows go in fives and tens ; they march their black feathers past a blue pool ; they celebrate an old festival. A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits on my hand washing his forelegs. I might ask: Who are these people?
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Sea-Wash

The sea-wash never ends. The sea-wash repeats, repeats. Only old songs? Is that all the sea knows? Only the old strong songs? Is that all? The sea-wash repeats, repeats.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Bronzes

They ask me to handle bronzes Kept by children in China Three thousand years Since their fathers Took fire and molds and hammers And made these. The Ming, the Chou, And other dynasties, Out, gone, reckoned in ciphers, Dynasties dressed up In old gold and old yellow — They saw these. Let the wheels Of three thousand years Turn, turn, turn on. Let one poet then
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Threes

I WAS a boy when I heard three red words a thousand Frenchmen died in the streets for: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity — I asked why men die for words. I was older; men with mustaches, sideburns, lilacs, told me the high golden words are : Mother, Home, and Heaven — other older men with face decorations said : God, Duty, Immortality — they sang these threes slow from deep lungs. Years ticked off their say-so on the great clocks of doom and damnation, soup and nuts : meteors flashed their say-so: and out of great Russia came three dusky syllables workmen took guns and went out to die for: Bread, Peace, Land. And I met a marine of the U. S. A., a leatherneck with
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

People Who Must

I PAINTED on the roof of a skyscraper. I painted a long while and called it a day's work. The people on a corner swarmed and the traffic cop's whistle never let up all afternoon. They were the same as bugs, many bugs on their way — Those people on the go or at a standstill ; And the traffic cop a spot of blue, a splinter of brass, Where the black tides ran around him And he kept the street. I painted a long while And called it a day's work.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Aprons of Silence

Many things I might have said today. And I kept my mouth shut. So many times I was asked To come and say the same things Everybody was saying, no end To the yes-yes, yes-yes, me-too, me-too. The aprons of silence covered me. A wire and hatch held my tongue. I spit nails into an abyss and listened. I shut off the gabble of Jones, Johnson, Smith, All whose names take pages in the city directory. I fixed up a padded cell and lugged it around. I locked myself in and nobody knew it. Only the keeper and the kept in the hoosegow Knew it — on the streets, in the postoffice, On the cars, into the railroad station
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Pennsylvania

I HAVE been in Pennsylvania, In the Monongahela and the Hocking Valleys. In the blue Susquehanna On a Saturday morning I saw the mounted constabulary go by, I saw boys playing marbles. Spring and the hills laughed. And in places Along the Appalachian chain, I saw steel arms handling coal and iron, And I saw the white-cauliflower faces Of miners' wives waiting for the men to come home from the day's work. I made color studies in crimson and violet Over the dust and domes of culm at sunset.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Blue Island Intersection

Six street ends come together here. They feed people and wagons into the center. In and out all day horses with thoughts of nose-bags, Men with shovels, women with baskets and baby buggies. Six ends of streets and no sleep for them all day. The people and wagons come and go, out and in. Triangles of banks and drug stores watch. The policemen whistle, the trolley cars bump : Wheels, wheels, feet, feet, all day. In the false dawn when the chickens blink And the east shakes a lazy baby toe at to-morrow, And the east fixes a pink half-eye this way, In the time when only one milk wagon crosses These three streets, these six street ends, It is the sleep time and they rest.

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