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Contemplative, Carl Sandburg, in English Clear filters

ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

White Ash

There is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice. She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door. Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice . . . but these are some of her thoughts : The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron. The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke. The love of a young man whose sweetheart married an older man for money burns with a sputtering uncertain flame. And there is a love . . . one in a thousand . . ., burns clean and is gone leaving a white ash. . . .
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Glimmer

Let down your braids of hair, lady. Cross your legs and sit before the looking-glass And gaze long on lines under your eyes. Life writes; men dance. And you know how men pay women.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Proud and Beautiful

After you have spent all the money modistes and manicures and mannikins will take for fixing you over into a thing the people on the streets call proud and beautiful, After the shops and fingers have worn out all they have and know and can hope to have and know for the sake of making you what the people on the streets call proud and beautiful, After there is absolutely nothing more to be done for the sake of staging you as a great enigmatic bird of paradise and they must all declare you to be proud and beautiful, After you have become the last word in good looks, insofar as good looks may be fixed and formulated, then, why then, there is nothing more to it then, it is then you listen and see how voices
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Streets Too Old

I WALKED among the streets of an old city and the streets were lean as the throats of hard seafish soaked in salt and kept in barrels many years. How old, how old, how old, we are : — the walls went on saying, street walls leaning toward each other like old women of the people, like old midwives tired and only doing what must be done. The greatest the city could offer me, a stranger, was statues of the kings, on all corners bronzes of kings — ancient bearded kings who wrote books and spoke of God's love for all people — and young kings who took forth armies out across the frontiers splitting the heads of their opponents and enlarging their kingdoms. Strangest of all to me, a stranger in this old city, was
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Two Items

Strong rocks hold up the riksdag bridge . . . always strong river waters shoving their shoulders against them . . . In the riksdag to-night three hundred men are talking to each other about more potatoes and bread for the Swedish people to eat this winter. In a boat among calm waters next to the running waters a fisherman sits in the dark and I, leaning at a parapet, see him lift a net and let it down ... he waits ... the waters run ... the riksdag talks ... he lifts the net and lets it down . . . Stars lost in the sky ten days of drizzle spread over the sky saying yes-yes. Every afternoon at four o'clock fifteen apple women who have sold their apples in Christiania meet
ContemplativeCarl 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 the dome and the river, the sun and the smoke rose gold, The haze changes from sunset to star. The pour of a thin silver struggles against the dark. A star might call : It's a long way across.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Trinity Peace

The grave of Alexander Hamilton is in Trinity yard at the end of Wall Street. The grave of Robert Fulton likewise is in Trinity yard where Wall Street stops. And in this yard stenogs, bundle boys, scrubwomen, sit on the tombstones, and walk on the grass of graves, speaking of war and weather, of babies, wages and love. An iron picket fence . . . and streaming thousands along Broadway sidewalks . . . straw hats, faces, legs ... a singing, talking, hustling river . . . down the great street that ends with a Sea. . . . easy is the sleep of Alexander Hamilton. . . . easy is the sleep of Robert Fulton. . . . easy are the great governments and the great steamboats.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Timber Wings

There was a wild pigeon came often to Hinkley's timber. Gray wings that wrote their loops and triangles on the walnuts and the hazel. There was a wild pigeon. There was a summer came year by year to Hinkley's timber. Rainy months and sunny and pigeons calling and one pigeon best of all who came. There was a summer. It is so long ago I saw this wild pigeon and listened. It is so long ago I heard the summer song of the pigeon who told me why night comes, why death and stars come, why the whippoorwill remembers three notes only and always. It is so long ago; it is like now and today; the gray
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Blue Ridge

Born a million years ago you stay here a million years . . . watching the women come and live and be laid away . . . you and they thin-gray thin-dusk lovely. So it goes: either the early morning lights are lovely or the early morning star. I am glad I have seen racehorses, women, mountains.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

How Much?

How much do you love me, a million bushels ? Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more. And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel ? To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel. And is this your heart arithmetic? This is the way the wind measures the weather.

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