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ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Near Keokuk

Thirty-two Greeks are dipping their feet in a creek. Sloshing their bare feet in a cool flow of clear water. All one midsummer day ten hours the Greeks stand in leather shoes shoveling gravel. Now they hold their toes and ankles to the drift of running water. Then they go to the bunk cars and eat mulligan and prune sauce. Smoke one or two pipefuls, look at the stars, tell smutty stories About men and women they have known, countries they have seen, Railroads they have built — and then the deep sleep of children.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Psalm of Those Who Go Forth Before Daylight

The policeman buys shoes slow and careful ; the teamster buys gloves slow and careful; they take care of their feet and hands; they live on their feet and hands. The milkman never argues; he works alone and no one speaks to him; the city is asleep when he is on the job; he puts a bottle on six hundred porches and calls it a day's work; he climbs two hundred wooden stairways ; two horses are company for him ; he never argues. The rolling-mill men and the sheet-steel men are brothers of cinders; they empty cinders out of their shoes after the day's work; they ask their wives to fix burnt holes in the knees of their trousers; their necks and ears are covered with a smut; they scour
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Clowns Dying

Five circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind rouge-red lips and powder-white face.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Street Window

The pawn-shop man knows hunger. And how far hunger has eaten the heart Of one who comes with an old keepsake. Here are wedding rings and baby bracelets, Scarf pins and shoe buckles, jeweled garters, Old-fashioned knives with inlaid handles. Watches of old gold and silver, Old coins worn with finger-marks. They tell stories.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Cartoon

I AM making a Cartoon of a Woman. She is the People. She is the Great Dirty Mother. And Many Children hang on her Apron, crawl at her Feet, snuggle at her Breasts.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Southern Pacific

Huntington sleeps in a house six feet long. Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned. Huntington dreams of ten thousand, men saying: Yes, sir. Blithery sleeps in a house six feet long. Blithery dreams of rails and ties he laid. Blithery dreams of saying to Huntington: Yes, sir. Huntington, Blithery, sleep in houses six feet long.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Young Bullfrogs

Jimmy Wimbledon listened a first week in June. Ditches along prairie roads of Northern Illinois Filled the arch of night with young bullfrog songs. Infinite mathematical metronomic croaks rose and spoke. Rose and sang, rose in a choir of puzzles. They made his head ache with riddles of music. They rested his head with beaten cadence. Jimmy Wimbledon listened.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Prairie Waters by Night

Chatter of birds two by two raises a night song joining a litany of running water — sheer waters showing the russet of old stones remembering many rains. And the long willows drowse on the shoulders of the running water, and sleep from much music; joined songs of day-end, feathery throats and stony waters, in a choir chanting new psalms. It is too much for the long willows when low laughter of a red moon comes down ; and the willows drowse and sleep on the shoulders of the running water.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Loam

In the loam we sleep, In the cool moist loam, To the lull of years that pass And the break of stars. From the loam, then. The soft warm loam. We rise: To shape of rose leaf, Of face and shoulder. We stand, then. To a whiff of life. Lifted to the silver of the sun Over and out of the loam A day.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Still Life

Cool your heels on the rail of an observation car. Let the engineer open her up for ninety miles an hour. Take in the prairie right and left, rolling land and new hay crops, swaths of new hay laid in the sun. A gray village flecks by and the horses hitched in front of the post-office never blink an eye. A barnyard and fifteen Holstein cows, dabs of white on a black wall map, never blink an eye. A signalman in a tower, the outpost of Kansas City, keeps his place at a window with the serenity of a bronze statue on a dark night when lovers pass whispering.

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