Poems by Carl Sandburg

DUNES

by Carl Sandburg

WHAT do we see here in the sand dunes of the white
     moon alone with our thoughts, Bill,
Alone with our dreams, Bill, soft as the women tying
     scarves around their heads dancing,
Alone with a picture and a picture coming one after the
     other of all the dead,
The dead more than all these grains of sand one by one
     piled here in the moon,
Piled against the sky-line taking shapes like the hand of
     the wind wanted,
What do we see here, Bill, outside of what the wise men
     beat their heads on,
Outside of what the poets cry for and the soldiers drive
     on headlong and leave their skulls in the sun for--
     what, Bill?

WHITELIGHT

YOUR whitelight flashes the frost to-night
Moon of the purple and silent west.
Remember me one of your lovers of dreams.

FLUX

SAND of the sea runs red
Where the sunset reaches and quivers.
Sand of the sea runs yellow
Where the moon slants and wavers.

UNDER THE HARVEST MOON

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.

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.

CHILD MOON

THE child's wonder
At the old moon
Comes back nightly.
She points her finger
To the far silent yellow thing
Shining through the branches
Filtering on the leaves a golden sand,
Crying with her little tongue, "See the moon!"
And in her bed fading to sleep
With babblings of the moon on her little mouth.

I SANG

I SANG to you and the moon
But only the moon remembers.
     I sang
O reckless free-hearted
      free-throated rythms,
Even the moon remembers them
     And is kind to me.

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 fooling.

NOCTURNE IN A
DESERTED BRICKYARD

STUFF of the moon
Runs on the lapping sand
Out to the longest shadows.
Under the curving willows,
And round the creep of the wave line,
Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters
Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night.

(These poems are in the public domain)

Created by Cheryl Robertson at Moonlight Systems

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