HAZE
by: Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
- EEP a red heart of memories
- Under the great gray rain sheds of the sky,
- Under the open sun and the yellow gloaming embers.
- Remember all paydays of lilacs and songbirds;
- All starlights of cool memories on storm paths.
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- Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
- They speak to me. I can not tell you what they say.
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- Other faces rise on the prairie.
- They are unborn. The future.
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- Yesterday and tomorrow cross and mix on the skyline.
- The two are lost in a purple haze. One forgets. One waits.
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- In the yellow dust of sunsets, in the meadows of vermilion
eight o'clock
- June nights . . . the dead men and the unborn children speak
to me . . . I can not tell you what they say . . . you listen
and you know.
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- I don't care who you are, man:
- I know a woman is looking for you
- And her soul is a corn-tassel kissing a west wind.
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- (The farm-boy whose face is the color of brick-dust, is calling
the cows; he will form the letter X with crossed streams of milk
from the teats; he will beat a tattoo on the bottom of a tin
pail with X's of milk.)
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- I don't care who you are, man:
- I know sons and daughters looking for you
- And they are gray dust working toward star paths
- And you see them from a garret window when you laugh
- At your luck and murmur, "I don't care."
-
- I don't care who you are, woman:
- I know a man is looking for you
- And his soul is a south-west wind kissing a corn-tassel.
-
- (The kitchen girl on the farm is throwing oats to the chickens
and the buff of their feathers says hello to the sunset's late
maroon.)
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- I don't care who you are, woman:
- I know sons and daughters looking for you
- And they are next year's wheat or the year after hidden in
the dark and loam.
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- My love is a yellow hammer spinning circles in Ohio, Indiana.
My love is a redbird shooting flights in straight lines in Kentucky
and Tennessee. My love is an early robin flaming an ember of
copper on her shoulders in March and April. My love is a graybird
living in the eaves of a Michigan house all winter. Why is my
love always a crying thing of wings?
-
- On the Indiana dunes, in the Mississippi marshes, I have
asked: Is it only a fishbone on the beach?
- Is it only a dog's jaw or a horse's skull whitening in the
sun? Is the red heart of man only ashes? Is the flame of it all
a white light switched off and the power-house wires cut?
-
- Why do the prairie roses answer every summer? Why do the
changing repeating rains come back out of the salt sea wind-blown?
Why do the stars keep their tracks? Why do the cradles of the
sky rock new babies?
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POEMS BY CARL SANDBURG |
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