Carl Sandburg Poems

Undertakers, hearse drivers, grave diggers,
I speak to you as one not afraid of your business.

You handle dust going to a long country,
...

They offer you many things,
I a few.
Moonlight on the play of fountains at night
With water sparkling a drowsy monotone,
...

I am singing to you
Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
Hard as a man in handcuffs,
Held where he cannot move:
...

Chatter of birds two by two raises a night song joining a litany of running water--sheer waters
showing the russet of old stones remembering many rains.

And the long willows drowse on the shoulders of the running water, and sleep from much music;
...

Hot gold runs a winding stream on the inside of a green bowl.

Yellow trickles in a fan figure, scatters a line of skirmishes, spreads a chorus
of dancing girls, performs blazing ochre evolutions, gathers the whole show into
...

And this will be all?
And the gates will never open again?
And the dust and the wind will play around the rusty door
...

Here is dust remembers it was a rose
one time and lay in a woman's hair.
Here is dust remembers it was a woman
one time and in her hair lay a rose.
...

Every year Emily Dickinson sent one friend
the first arbutus bud in her garden.
...