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ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Under a Telephone Pole

I AM a copper wire slung in the air, Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow. Night and day I keep singing — humming and thrumming: It is love and war and money ; it is the fighting and the tears, the work and want, Death and laughter of men and women passing through me, carrier of your speech, In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and the shine drying, A copper wire.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Noon Hour

She sits in the dust at the walls And makes cigars, Bending at the bench With fingers wage-anxious, Changing her sweat for the day's pay. Now the noon hour has come. And she leans with her bare arms On the window-sill over the river, Leans and feels at her throat Cool-moving things out of the free open ways At her throat and eyes and nostrils The touch and the blowing cool Of great free ways beyond the walls.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Plowboy

After the last red sunset glimmer. Black on the line of a low hill rise, Formed into moving shadows, I saw A plowboy and two horses lined against the gray, Plowing in the dusk the last furrow. The turf had a gleam of brown, And smell of soil was in the air. And, cool and moist, a haze of April. I shall remember you long, Plowboy and horses against the sky in shadow. I shall remember you and the picture You made for me. Turning the turf in the dusk And haze of an April gloaming.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Uplands in May

Wonder as of old things Fresh and fair come back Hangs over pasture and road. Lush in the lowland grasses rise And upland beckons to upland. The great strong hills are humble.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

From the Shore

A LONE gray bird, Dim-dipping, far-flying, Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults Of night and the sea And the stars and storms. Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers. Out into the gloom it swings and batters. Out into the wind and the rain and the vast, Out into the pit of a great black world, Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown. Love of mist and rapture of flight. Glories of chance and hazards of death On its eager and palpitant wings. Out into the deep of the great dark world. Beyond the long borders where foam and drift Of the sundering waves are lost and gone
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Docks

Strolling along By the teeming docks, I watch the ships put out. Black ships that heave and lunge And move like mastodons Arising from lethargic sleep. The fathomed harbor Calls them not nor dares Them to a strain of action, But outward, on and outward, Sounding low-reverberating calls, Shaggy in the half-lit distance, They pass the pointed headland. View the wide, far-lifting wilderness And leap with cumulative speed To test the challenge of the sea.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Window

Night from a railroad car window Is a great, dark, soft thing Broken across with slashes of light.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Last Answers

I WROTE a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. I answered: The whole world was mist once long ago and some day it will all go back to mist, Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers Go running back to dust and mist.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Between Two Hills

Between two hills The old town stands. The houses loom And the roofs and trees And the dusk and the dark, The damp and the dew Are there. The prayers are said And the people rest For sleep is there And the touch of dreams Is over all.
ContemplativeCarl Sandburg

Follies

Shaken, The blossoms of lilac, And shattered, The atoms of purple. Green dip the leaves. Darker the bark. Longer the shadows. Sheer lines of poplar Shimmer with masses of silver And down in a garden old with years And broken walls of ruin and story, Roses rise with red rain-memories. May! In the open world The sun comes and finds your face, Remembering all.

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