Carl Sandburg

32 poems

Musings of a Police Reporter in the Identification Bureau / YOU have loved forty women, but you have only one thumb.

AFTER the last red sunset glimmer, / Black on the line of a low hill rise,

NEW-MOWN hay smell and wind of the plain made her / a woman whose ribs had the power of the hills in

Thousands of sheep, soft-footed, black-nosed sheep-- / one by one going up the hill and over the fence--one by

NAPOLEON shifted, / Restless in the old sarcophagus

I CANNOT tell you now; / When the wind's drive and whirl

PASSING through huddled and ugly walls / By doorways where women

I AM the mist, the impalpable mist, / Back of the thing you seek.

OF my city the worst that men will ever say is this: / You took little children away from the sun and the dew,

OVER the dead line we have called to you / To come across with a word to us,

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.

MY head knocks against the stars. / My feet are on the hilltops.