THE HARBOR
PASSING through huddled and ugly walls / By doorways where women
AMONG THE RED GUNS
❦
After waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang
low among dry leaves in an elm
AMONG the red guns,
In the hearts of soldiers
Running free blood
In the long, long campaign:
Dreams go on.
Among the leather saddles,
In the heads of soldiers
Heavy in the wracks and kills
Of all straight fighting:
Dreams go on.
Among the hot muzzles,
In the hands of soldiers
Brought from flesh-folds of women--
Soft amid the blood and crying--
In all your hearts and heads
Among the guns and saddles and muzzles:
Dreams,
Dreams go on,
Out of the dead on their backs,
Broken and no use any more:
Dreams of the way and the end go on.
More poems by Carl Sandburg
THE MIST
I AM the mist, the impalpable mist, / Back of the thing you seek.
OLD WOMAN
THE owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo / From building and battered paving-stone.
MILL-DOORS
YOU never come back. / I say good-by when I see you going in the doors,