Manitoba Childe Roland / Carl Sandburg

Manitoba Childe Roland

Last night a January wind was ripping at the shingles
    over our house and whistling a wolf song under the
    eaves.

I sat in a leather rocker and read to a six-year-old girl
    the Browning poem, Childe Roland to the Dark
    Tower Came.

And her eyes had the haze of autumn hills and it was
    beautiful to her and she could not understand.

A man is crossing a big prairie, says the poem, and
    nothing happens — and he goes on and on — and it's
    all lonesome and empty and nobody home.

And he goes on and on — and nothing happens — and he
    comes on a horse's skull, dry bones of a dead horse —
    and you know more than ever it's all lonesome and
    empty and nobody home.

And the man raises a horn to his lips and blows — he
    fixes a proud neck and forehead toward the empty
    sky and the empty land--and blows one last wonder-
    cry.

And as the shuttling automatic memory of man clicks
    off its results willy-nilly and inevitable as the snick
    of a mouse-trap or the trajectory of a 42-centimetre
    projectile,

I flash to the form of a man to his hips in snow drifts
    of Manitoba and Minnesota — in the sled derby run
    from Winnipeg to Minneapolis.

He is beaten in the race the first day out of Winnipeg —
    the lead dog is eaten by four team mates — and the
    man goes on and on — running while the other racers
    ride, running while the other racers sleep —

Lost in a blizzard twenty-four hours, repeating a circle
    of travel hour after hour — fighting the dogs who
    dig holes in the snow and whimper for sleep —
    pushing on — running and walking five hundred
    miles to the end of the race — almost a winner — one
    toe frozen, feet blistered and frost-bitten.

And I know why a thousand young men of the North-
    west meet him in the finishing miles and yell cheers
    — I know why judges of the race call him a winner
    and give him a special prize even though he is a
    loser.

I know he kept under his shirt and around his thudding
    heart amid the blizzards of five hundred miles that
    one last wonder-cry of Childe Roland — and I told
    the six year old girl about it.

And while the January wind was ripping at the shingles
    and whistling a wolf song under the eaves, her eyes
    had the haze of autumn hills and it was beautiful
    to her and she could not understand.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Corhhuskers, 1918

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

Carl Sandburg biography

Lomen Bros., Dogsled team, Nome, Alaska, 1910. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

Theme in Yellow / Carl Sandburg

Mirko S18, Jack-o'-lantern in Banovci, 2020. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

from Fog and Fire

Theme in Yellow

I spot the hills
With yellow balls in autumn.
I light the prairie cornfields
Orange and tawny gold clusters
And I am called pumpkins.
On the last of October
When dusk is fallen
Children join hands
And circle round me
Singing ghost songs
And love to the harvest moon;
I am a jack-o'-lantern
With terrible teeth
And the children know
I am joking.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Chicago Poems, 1916

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

Carl Sandburg biography

"Theme in Yellow" read by Zither P. Oxblood. Courtesy Graveyard Poetry.

Summer Stars / Carl Sandburg

Summer Stars

Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
               So lazy and hum-strumming.

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

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

Carl Sandburg biography

NJCHCI, Summer Stars above St. Suvorova, 2013. CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Garden Wireless / Carl Sandburg

Garden Wireless

How many feet ran with sunlight, water and air?

What little devils shaken of laughter, cramming their little ribs with chuckles,

Fixed this lone red tulip, a woman’s mouth of passion kisses, a nun’s mouth of sweet thinking, here topping a straight line of green, a pillar stem?

Who hurled this bomb of red caresses?— nodding balloon-film shooting its wireless every fraction of a second these June days:
                                Love me before I die;
                                               Love me — love me now.

Jason Zhang, Tulip in front yard of Peace Catholic School, 2018. CC 1.0, Wikimedia Commons.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Cornhuskers, 1918

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

Carl Sandburg biography

Autumn Movement / Carl Sandburg

Autumn Movement

from Redhaw Winds

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

The field of cornflower yellow is a scarf at the neck of the copper sunburned woman, the mother of the year, the taker of seeds.

The northwest wind comes and the yellow is torn full of holes, new beautiful things come in the first spit of snow on the northwest wind, and the old things go, not one lasts.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Poetry, October 1918

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

Carl Sandburg biography

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

Falltime / Carl Sandburg

Falltime

from Redhaw Winds

Gold of a ripe oat straw, gold of a southwest moon,

Canada-thistle blue and flimmering larkspur blue,
Tomatoes shining in the October sun with red hearts,
Shining five and six in a row on a wooden fence,
Why do you keep wishes shining on your faces all day long,
Wishes like women with half-forgotten lovers going to new cities?

What is there for you in the birds, the birds, the birds, crying down on the north wind in September — acres of birds spotting the air going south?

Is there something finished? And some new beginning on the way?

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Poetry, October 1918

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

Carl Sandburg biography

A Father to His Son / Carl Sandburg

A Father to His Son

A father sees a son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
'Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum and monotony
and guide him amid sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
And left them dead years before burial:
The quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
Has twisted good enough men
Sometimes into dry thwarted worms.
Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.

Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use amongst other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.
      Then he may understand Shakespeare
      and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
      Michael Faraday and free imaginations
bringing changes into a world resenting change.
      He will be lonely enough
      to have time for the work
      he knows as his own.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from The People, Yes, 1936

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada]

Carl Sandburg biography

Under the harvest moon / Carl Sandburg

from Days

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Poetry, October 1915

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

Carl Sandburg biography

"Under the Harvest Moon" read by Eugene Burger. Courtesy The Artistic Nomad.

Back Yard / Carl Sandburg

Back Yard

Shine on, O moon of summer.
Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak,
All silver under your rain to-night.

An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion.

A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next
     month; to-night they are throwing you kisses.

An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a cherry tree in his back yard.

The clocks say I must go – I stay here sitting on the
     back porch drinking white thoughts you rain down.

          Shine on, O moon,
Shake out more and more silver changes.

~~
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
from Chicago Poems, 1916

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

Carl Sandburg biography