Carl Sandburg Poems

I
I am the undertow
Washing tides of power
Battering the pillars
...

What does a hangman think about
When he goes home at night from work?
When he sits down with his wife and
Children for a cup of coffee and a
...

In the loam we sleep,
In the cool moist loam,
To the lull of years that pass
And the break of stars,
...

Tall timber stood here once, hee on a corn belt farm along the Monon.
Here the roots of a half-mile of trees dug their runners deep in the loam for a grip and a hold against wind storms.
Then the axemen came and the chips flew to the zing of steel and handle--the lank railsplitters cut the big ones first, the beeches and the oaks, then the brush.
Dynamite, wagons, and horses took the stumps--the plows sunk their teeth in--now it is first class corn land--omproved property--and the hogs grunt over the fodder crops.
...

On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a girl are sitting,
She across his knee and they are looking face into face
Talking to each other without words, singing rythms in silence to each other.
...

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
...

What do we see here in the sand dunes of the white moon alone with our thoughts, Bill,
Alone with our dreams, Bill, soft as the women tying scarves around their heads dancing,
Alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the other of all the dead,
The dead more than all these grains of sand one by one piled here in the moon,
...

I am the mist, the impalpable mist,
Back of the thing you seek.
My arms are long,
Long as the reach of time and space.
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Take a hold now
On the silver handles here,
Six silver handles,
One for each of his old pals.
...