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Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
1878-1967

Short gems from
1916-1920

 

WHITE SHOULDERS

Your white shoulders
     I remember
And your shrug of laughter.

     Low laughter
     Shaken slow
From your white shoulders.

LOSSES

    I have love
    And a child,
    A banjo
    And shadows.
    (Losses of God,
    All will go
    And one day
    We will hold
    Only the shadows.)

JOY

    Let a joy keep you.
    Reach out your hands
    And take it when it runs by,
    As the Apache dancer
    Clutches his woman.
    I have seen them
    Live long and laugh loud,
    Sent on singing, singing,
    Smashed to the heart
    Under the ribs
    With a terrible love.
    Joy always,
    Joy everywhere –
    Let joy kill you!
    Keep away from the little deaths.

I SANG

    I sang to you and the moon
    But only the moon remembers.
         I sang
    O reckless free-hearted
               free-throated rythms,
    Even the moon remembers them
         And is kind to me.

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.

PRIMER LESSON

    Look out how you use proud words.
    When you let proud words go, it is not easy to call them back.
    They wear long boots, hard boots; they walk off proud;
    they can't hear you calling –
    Look out how you use proud words.

TROTHS

    Yellow dust on a bumble
         bee's wing,
    Grey lights in a woman's
         asking eyes,
    Red ruins in the changing
         sunset embers:
    I take you and pile high
         the memories.
    Death will break her claws
         on some I keep.

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.

 

BRINGERS

    Cover me over
    In dusk and dust and dreams.

    Cover me over
    And leave me alone.

    Cover me over,
    You tireless, great.

    Hear me and cover me,
    Bringers of dusk and dust and dreams.

FOG

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

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