Poem of the Day

Today I continued helping my mother inventory all her books. She had a copy of Carl Sandburg’s Chicago Poems, which I promptly commandeered. She doesn’t read much poetry anyway!

Happiness
By Carl Sandburg

I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

The moon has been especially beautiful the last few nights (and mornings) when it’s been clear enough to see it. I like the images of Death as a beautiful friend and Love as the asker of unanswerable questions.

Under the Harvest Moon
By Carl Sandburg

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over 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.

I finished reading The Killer Angels (and I highly recommend it) and now I’m watching Gettysburg, which is also fantastic (and an excellent adaptation). So here’s a depressing little poem to go with my war theme. Trust Sandburg to take something simple and create a powerful image.

Grass
By Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo,
Shovel them under and let me work—
               I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
               What place is this?
               Where are we now?

               I am the grass.
               Let me work.

I found this one in Celebrating America.

People Who Must
By Carl Sandburg

I painted on the roof of a skyscraper.
I painted a long while and called it a day’s work.
The people on a corner swarmed and the traffic cop’s whistle never let up all afternoon.

They were the same as bugs, many bugs on their way—
Those people on the go or at a standstill;
And the traffic cop a spot of blue, a splinter of brass,
Where the black tides ran around him
And he kept the street. I painted a long while
And called it a day’s work.

Here’s another one I found in Honey and Salt.

Fog Numbers
By Carl Sandburg

Birth is the starting point of passion.
Passion is the beginning of death.
How can you turn back from birth?
How can you say no to passion?
How can you bid death hold off?
And if thoughts come and hold you
And if dreams step in and shakes your bones
What can you do but take them and make them
    more your own?

    Of course, a nickel is a nickel,
    and a dime is a dime—sure—
    we learned that—
    why mention it now?
    of course, steel is steel;
    and a hammer is a hammer;
And a thought, a dream, is more than a name,
    a number, a fixed point.

                                .     .

Walk in a midnight fog now and say to it: Tell
    me your number and I’ll tell you mine.
Salute one morning sun falling on a river ribbon
    of mist and tell it: My number is such-and-
    such—what’s yours?

Of what is fog the starting point?
Of what is the red sun the beginning?
Long ago—as now—little men and women knew in
    their bones the singing and the aching of
    these stumbling questions.

This is from Sandburg’s Honey and Salt. I really like it, especially given how underused language is in everyday life. I often find myself having the same conversations with the same people. Perhaps I should post a “Word of the Day” instead of a PotD, but I think I’ll stick with the poems… P.S. If you haven’t read Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable by Mark Dunn, you should!

Is Wisdom a Lot of Language?
By Carl Sandburg

Apes, may I speak to you a moment?
Chimpanzees, come hither for words.
Orangoutangs, let’s get into a huddle.
Baboons, lemme whisper in your ears.
Gorillas, do yuh hear me hollerin’ to yuh?
And monkeys! monkeys! get this chatter—

   For a long time men have plucked letters
   Out of the air and shaped syllables.
   And out of the syllables came words
   And from the words came phrases, clauses.
   Sentences were born—and languages.
   (The Tower of Babel didn’t work out—
   it came down quicker than it went up.)
   Misunderstandings followed the languages,
   Arguments, epithets, maledictions, curses,
   Gossip, backbiting, the buzz of the bazoo,
   Chit chat, blah blah, talk just to be talking,
   Monologues or members telling other members
   How good they are now and were yesterday,
   Conversations missing the point,
   Dialogues seldom as beautiful as soliloquies,
   Seldom as fine as a man alone, a woman by herself
   Telling a clock, “I’m a plain damn fool.”

Read the dictionary from A to Izzard today.
Get a vocabulary. Brush up on your diction.
See whether wisdom is just a lot of language.

Here’s another one from Honey and Salt.

Ever a Seeker
By Carl Sandburg

The fingers turn the pages.
The pages unfold as a scroll.
There was the time there was no America.
Then came on the scroll an early
   America, a land of beginnings,
   an American being born.
Then came a later America, seeker
   and finder, yet ever more seeker
   than finder, ever seeking its way
   amid storm and dream.

I borrowed Carl Sandburg’s Honey and Salt from my mother’s bookcase. Here’s a selection.

Anecdote of Hemlock for Two Athenians
By Carl Sandburg

The grizzled Athenian ordered to hemlock,
Ordered to a drink and lights out,
Had a friend he never refused anything.

“Let me drink too,” the friend said.
And the grizzled Athenian answered,
“I never yet refused you anything.”

“I am short of hemlock enough for two,”
The head executioner interjected,
“There must be more silver for more hemlock.”

“Somebody pay this man for the drinks of death,”
The grizzled Athenian told his friends,
Who fished out the ready cash wanted.

“Since one cannot die on free cost at Athens,
Give this man his money,” were the words
OF the man named Phocion, the grizzled Athenian.

Yes, there are men who know how to die in a grand way.
There are men who make their finish worth mentioning.

Heh heh… This is in honor of Ryan and Jen and their aspirations of entering the legal profession. Just kidding around! Love you guys!

The Lawyers Know Too Much
By Carl Sandburg

The lawyers, Bob, know too much.
They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.
They know it all, what a dead hand wrote,
A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling,
The bones of the fingers a thin white ash.
   The lawyers know a dead man’s thoughts too well.

In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob,
Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers,
Too much hereinbefore provided whereas,
Too many doors to go in and out of.

When the lawyers are through
What is there left, Bob?
Can a mouse nibble at it
And find enough to fasten a tooth in?

Why is there always a secret singing
When a lawyer cashes in?
Why does a hearse horse snicker
Hauling a lawyer away?

The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue.
The knack of a mason outlasts a moon.
The hands of a plasterer hold a room together.
The land of a farmer wishes him back again.
   Singers of songs and dreamers of plays
   Build a house no wind blows over.
The lawyers—tell me why a hearse horse snickers hauling a lawyer’s bones.

I definitely feel like I’m going upstream…

Upstream
By Carl Sandburg

The strong men keep coming on.
They go down shot, hanged, sick, broken.
They live on fighting, singing,
        lucky as plungers.

The strong men…they keep coming on.
They strong mothers pulling them
        from a dark sea, a great prairie,
        a long mountain.

        Call hallelujah, call amen,
        call deep thanks.
The strong men keep coming on.