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Carl Sandburg
Women of night life amid the lights
Where the line of your full, round throats
Matches in gleam the glint of your eyes
And the ring of your heart-deep laughter :
It is much to be warm and sure of to-morrow.
Women of night life along the shadows,
Lean at your throats and skulking the walls.
Gaunt as a bitch worn to the bone,
Under the paint of your smiling faces :
It is much to be warm and sure of to-morrow.
Ah! wherefore with infection should he live,
And with his presence grace impiety,
That sin by him advantage should achieve,
And lace itself with his society?
Why should false painting imitate his cheek,
And steel dead seeming of his living hue?
Why should poor beauty indirectly seek
Roses of shadow, since his rose is true?
Why should he live, now Nature bankrupt is,
Beggar'd of blood to blush through lively veins?
For she hath no exchequer now but his,
And proud of many, lives upon his gains.
O! him she stores, to show what wealth she had
In days long since, before these last so bad.
Listen, listen, Mary mine,
To the whisper of the Apennine,
It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow
By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread
On the dim starlight then is spread,
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,
Shrouding...
A chilly Peace infests the Grass
The Sun respectful lies --
Not any Trance of industry
These shadows scrutinize --
Whose Allies go no more astray
For service or for Glee --
But all mankind deliver here
From whatsoever sea --
Yet, my pretty sportive friend,
Little is't to such an end
That I praise thy rareness!
Other dogs may be thy peers
Haply in these drooping ears,
And this glossy fairness.
But of thee it shall be said,
This dog watched beside a bed
Day and night unweary—
Watched within a curtained room,
Where no sunbeam brake the gloom
Round the sick and dreary.
Roses, gathered for a vase,
In that chamber died apace,
Beam and breeze resigning.
This dog only, waited on,
DARK is the forest and deep, and overhead
Hang stars like seeds of light
In vain, though not since they were sown was bred
Anything more bright.
And evermore mighty multitudes ride
About, nor enter in;
Of the other multitudes that dwell inside
Never yet was one seen.
The forest foxglove is purple, the marguerite
Outside is gold and white,
Nor can those that pluck either blossom greet
The others, day or night.
From the Spanish of Pedro Calderon de la Barca
A dream it was in which I found myself.
And you that hail me now, then hailed me king,
In a brave palace that was all my own,
Within, and all without it, mine; until,
Drunk with excess of majesty and pride,
Methought I towered so big and swelled so wide
That of myself I burst the glittering bubble
Which my ambition had about me blown,
And all again was darkness. Such a dream
As this, in which I may be walking now,
Dispensing solemn justice to you shadows,
Who make believe to listen; but anon
Kings, princes, captains, warriors, plume and steel,
Aye, even with all your airy theatre,
May flit into the air you seem to rend
I am finite as my picture frame
I sit full of shadows
and break my neck looking
over my shoulder
at a loss how we all come to be
in a new rogue world
I sit as stolidly as a column of cold ash,
longing for a bell’s clapper, or the skin
of a drum that shivers under the blows
of a pair of brushes. I have held
this shape too long, I tell myself.
The fine teeth of my thoughts
are through with falling.
Across the lawn, the French lilac
still glows green against the gray trees
as if summer could last forever –
as if a craze of twigs were some disgrace,
& not the soul’s own map –
& I feel a sigh coming toward me
from the edge of the world.
Grain by grain,
the shadows are losing their firm outlines.
After music,
the painter at last
is like an honest shadow
angry to hear of night.
The retriever pup
chases butterfly shadows
even in his sleep.
Butterfly’s shadow:
the dog’s nose goes wild
at the lack of odor.
Muzzle to ground,
his legs get ahead of him:
herding shadows.
Butterfly shadow
on the lawn shrinks, vanishes.
The dog digs for it.
Head under water
the golden retriever
keeps his eyes open.
On the creek bottom
an empty space is still data
my phone reminds me
no space is truly empty
a falling leaf reminds me
the time of long shadows
has come ‘round again
cedar waxwings whistle
through bare branches
the low sun catches on wings
in lieu of leaves
rests in a red oak
undressing in the wind
and flickers like an angel
resisting temptation
to follow the leaves down
spinning spiralling