Broadway
I shall never forget you, Broadway
Your golden and calling lights.
I’ll remember you long,
Tall-walled river of rush and play.
Hearts that know you hate you
And lips that have given you laughter
Have gone to their ashes of life and its roses,
Cursing the dreams that were lost
In the dust of your harsh and trampled stones.
poem by Carl Sandburg
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Sea Slant
On up the sea slant,
On up the horizon,
The ship limps.
The bone of her nose fog-gray,
The heart of her sea-strong,
She came a long way,
She goes a long way.
On up the sea slant,
On up the horizon,
She limps sea-strong, fog-gray
She is a green-lit night gray.
She comes and goes in sea-fog.
Up the horizon slant she limps.
poem by Carl Sandburg
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Bricklayer Love
I thought of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer
and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store.
I don't care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I
used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons.
When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky and the
mortar boards go wrong, I think of you.
poem by Carl Sandburg
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A Sphinx
Close-mouthed you sat five thousand years and never let out a whisper.
Processions came by, marchers, asking questions you answered with grey eyes never blinking, shut lips never talking.
Not one croak of anything you know has come from your cat crouch of ages.
I am one of those who know all you know and I keep my questions: I know the answers you hold.
poem by Carl Sandburg
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Dreams in the Dusk
Dreams in the dusk,
Only dreams closing the day
And with the day’s close going back
To the gray things, the dark things,
The far, deep things of dreamland.
Dreams, only dreams in the dusk,
Only the old remembered pictures
Of lost days when the day’s loss
Wrote in tears the heart’s loss.
Tears and loss and broken dreams
May find your heart at dusk.
poem by Carl Sandburg
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Letters to Dead Imagists
EMILY DICKINSON:
You gave us the bumble bee who has a soul,
The everlasting traveler among the hollyhocks,
And how God plays around a back yard garden.
STEVIE CRANE:
War is kind and we never knew the kindness of war till you came;
Nor the black riders and clashes of spear and shield out of the sea,
Nor the mumblings and shots that rise from dreams on call.
poem by Carl Sandburg
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Hell on the Wabash
When country fiddlers held a convention in
Danville, the big money went to a barn dance
artist who played Turkey in the Straw, with
variations.
They asked him the name of the piece calling
it a humdinger and he answered, "I call it
'Hell on the Wabash.'"
The two next best were The Speckled Hen, and
Sweet Potatoes Grow in Sandy Land, with
variations.
poem by Carl Sandburg
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Bones
Sling me under the sea.
Pack me down in the salt and wet.
No farmer’s plow shall touch my bones.
No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak
How jokes are gone and empty is my mouth.
Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes,
Purple fish play hide-and-seek,
And I shall be song of thunder, crash of sea,
Down on the floors of salt and wet.
Sling me … under the sea.
poem by Carl Sandburg
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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.
poem by Carl Sandburg
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Baby Face
White moon comes in on a baby face.
The shafts across her bed are flimmering.
Out on the land White Moon shines,
Shines and glimmers against gnarled shadows,
All silver to slow twisted shadows
Falling across the long road that runs from the house.
Keep a little of your beauty
And some of your flimmering silver
For her by the window to-night
Where you come in, White Moon.
poem by Carl Sandburg
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