Night Movement — New York / Carl Sandburg

Night Movement — New York

In the night, when the sea-winds take the city in their arms,
And cool the loud streets that kept their dust noon and afternoon;
In the night, when the sea-birds call to the lights of the city,
The lights that cut on the skyline their name of a city;
In the night, when the trains and wagons start from a long way off
For the city where the people ask bread and want letters;
In the night the city lives too — the day is not all.
In the night there are dancers dancing and singers singing,
And the sailors and soldiers look for numbers on doors.
In the night the sea-winds take the city in their arms.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Smoke and Steel, 1920

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Carl Sandburg biography

Mike Warot, Chicago at Night, 2010. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons