AMONG THE RED GUNS
After waking at dawn one morning when the wind sang / low among dry leaves in an elm
Carl Sandburg
32 poems
AND THEY OBEY
SMASH down the cities. / Knock the walls to pieces.
BUTTONS
I HAVE been watching the war map slammed up for / advertising in front of the newspaper office.
CHILD MOON
THE child's wonder / At the old moon
DREAM GIRL
YOU will come one day in a waver of love, / Tender as dew, impetuous as rain,
GRACELAND
TOMB of a millionaire, / A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen,
HALSTED STREET CAR
COME you, cartoonists, / Hang on a strap with me here
HAPPINESS
I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell / me what is happiness.
I AM THE PEOPLE, THE MOB
I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass. / Do you know that all the great work of the world is
IRON
GUNS, / Long, steel guns,
JACK
JACK was a swarthy, swaggering son-of-a-gun. / He worked thirty years on the railroad, ten hours a day,
JOY
LET a joy keep you. / Reach out your hands
KILLERS
I AM singing to you / Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
LANGUAGES
THERE are no handles upon a language / Whereby men take hold of it
MASSES
AMONG the mountains I wandered and saw blue haze and / red crag and was amazed;
MILL-DOORS
YOU never come back. / I say good-by when I see you going in the doors,
MURMURINGS IN A FIELD HOSPITAL
[They picked him up in the grass where he had lain two / days in the rain with a piece of shrapnel in his lungs.]
NOON HOUR
SHE sits in the dust at the walls / And makes cigars,
OLD WOMAN
THE owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo / From building and battered paving-stone.
PALS
TAKE a hold now / On the silver handles here,