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Contemplative, Carl Sandburg, in English Clear filters

ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

They Ask Each Other Where They Came From

Am I the river your white birds fly over? Are you the green valley my silver channels roam? The two of us a bowl of blue sky day time and a bowl of red stars night time? Who picked you out of the first great whirl of nothings and threw you here?
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

New Feet

Empty battlefields keep their phantoms. Grass crawls over old gun wheels And a nodding Canada thistle flings a purple Into the summer's southwest wind, Wrapping a root in the rust of a bayonet, Reaching a blossom in rust of shrapnel.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Moonset

Leaves of poplars pick Japanese prints against the west. Moon sand on the canal doubles the changing pictures. The moon's good-by ends pictures. The west is empty. All else is empty. No moon-talk at all now. Only dark listening to dark.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Have Me

Have me in the blue and the sun. Have me on the open sea and the mountains. When I go into the grass of the sea floor, I will go alone. This is where I came from — the chlorine and the salt are blood and bones. It is here the nostrils rush the air to the lungs. It is here oxygen clamors to be let in. And here in the root grass of the sea floor I will go alone. Love goes far. Here love ends. Have me in the blue and the sun.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Crimson Rambler

Now that a crimson rambler begins to crawl over the house of our two lives — Now that a red curve winds across the shingles — Now that hands washed in early sunrises climb and spill scarlet on a white lattice weave — Now that a loop of blood is written on our roof and reaching around a chimney — How are the two lives of this house to keep strong hands and strong hearts?
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Goldwing Moth

A GOLDWING moth is between the scissors and the ink bottle on the desk. Last night it flew hundreds of circles around a glass bulb and a flame wire. The wings are a soft gold; it is the gold of illuminated initials in manuscripts of the medieval monks.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

The Sea Hold

The sea is large. The sea hold on a leg of land in the Chesapeake hugs an early sunset and a last morning star over the oyster beds and the late clam boats of lonely men. Five white houses on a half-mile strip of land . . . five white dice rolled from a tube. Not so long ago ... the sea was large . . . And to-day the sea has lost nothing ... it keeps all. I am a loon about the sea. I make so many sea songs, I cry so many sea cries, I forget so many sea songs and sea cries. I am a loon about the sea. So are five men I had a fish fry with once in a tar-paper shack trembling in a sand storm. The sea knows more about them than they know themselves. They know only how the sea hugs and will not let go.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Monosyllabic

Let me be monosyllabic to-day, O Lord. Yesterday I loosed a snarl of words on a fool, on a child. To-day, let me be monosyllabic ... a crony of old men who wash sunlight in their fingers and enjoy slow-pacing clocks.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Testament

I GIVE the undertakers permission to haul my body to the graveyard and to lay away all, the head, the feet, the hands, all: I know there is something left over they can not put away. Let the nanny goats and the billy goats of the shanty people eat the clover over my grave and if any yellow hair or any blue smoke of flowers is good enough to grow over me let the dirty-fisted children of the shanty people pick these flowers. I have had my chance to live with the people who have too much and the people who have too little and I chose one of the two and I have told no man why.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Falltime

Gold of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon, Canada thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue, Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts, Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence. Why do you keep wishes on your faces all day long, Wishes like women with half-forgotten lovers going to new cities? What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds, crying down on the north wind in September, acres of birds spotting the air going south? Is there something finished? And some new beginning on the way?

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