Poems by Carl Sandburg

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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And They Obey

Smash down the cities.

Knock the walls to pieces.

Break the factories and cathedrals, warehouses

and homes

Into loose piles of stone and lumber and black

burnt wood:

You are the soldiers and we command you.

Build up the cities.

Carl Sandburg

Baby Toes

There is a blue star, Janet,

Fifteen years’ ride from us,

If we ride a hundred miles an hour.

There is a white star, Janet,

Forty years’ ride from us,

If we ride a hundred miles an hour.

Carl Sandburg

A Coin

Your western heads here cast on money,

You are the two that fade away together,

Partners in the mist.

Lunging buffalo shoulder,

Lean Indian face,

We who come after where you are gone

Salute your forms on the new nickel.

You are

Carl Sandburg

Wars

In the old wars drum of hoofs and the beat of shod feet.

In the new wars hum of motors and the tread of rubber tires.

In the wars to come silent wheels and whirr of rods not

yet dreamed out in the heads of men.

In the old wars clutches of short swords and jabs into

faces with spears.

In the new wars long range guns and smashed walls, guns

running a spit of metal and men falling in tens and

Carl Sandburg

A Fence

Now the stone house on the lake front is finished and the

workmen are beginning the fence.

The palings are made of iron bars with steel points that

can stab the life out of any man who falls on them.

As a fence, it is a masterpiece, and will shut off the rabble

and all vagabonds and hungry men and all wandering

children looking for a place to play.

Passing through the bars and over the steel points will go

Carl Sandburg

Arithmetic

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your

head.

Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how

many you had before you lost or won.

Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven — or five

six bundle of sticks.

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand

to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.

Carl Sandburg

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

Carl Sandburg

Chicago

HOG Butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight

Handler;

Stormy, husky, brawling,

City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I

have seen your painted women under the gas lamps

Carl Sandburg

Killers

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:

Under the sun

Are sixteen million men,

Chosen for shining teeth,

Sharp eyes, hard legs,

Carl Sandburg

Hope Is A Tattered Flag

Hope is a tattered flag and a dream of time.

Hope is a heartspun word, the rainbow, the shadblow in white

The evening star inviolable over the coal mines,

The shimmer of northern lights across a bitter winter night,

The blue hills beyond the smoke of the steel works,

The birds who go on singing to their mates in peace, war, peace,

The ten-cent crocus bulb blooming in a used-car salesroom,

The horseshoe over the door, the luckpiece in the pocket,

Carl Sandburg

Fog

THE fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work—

I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?

Carl Sandburg