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Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg

Chicks

THE CHICK in the egg picks at the shell, cracks open one oval world, and enters another oval world.  
 
“Cheep … cheep … cheep” is the salutation of the newcomer, the emigrant, the casual at the gates of the new world.  
 
“Cheep … cheep” … from oval to oval, sunset to sunset, star to star.  
 
It is at the door of this house, this teeny weeny eggshell exit, it is here men say a riddle and jeer each other: who are you? where do you go from here?  
 
(In the academies many books, at the circus many sacks of peanuts, at the club rooms many cigar butts.)    
 
“Cheep … cheep” … from oval to oval, sunset to sunset, star to star.

Cornhuskers. 1918.

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Other works by Carl Sandburg...
Child Moon

THE child’s wonder At the old moon Comes back nightly. She points her finger To the far silent yellow thing
The Junk Man

I AM glad God saw Death And gave Death a job taking care… of living: When all the wheels in a clock are… the connections loose
Dreams in the Dusk

DREAMS in the dusk, Only dreams closing the day And with the day’s close going bac… To the gray things, the dark thing… The far, deep things of dreamland.
Potomac River Mist

All the policemen, saloonkeepers a… knew Bern Dailey; secretary ten y… Pickpockets, yeggs, three card men… from zone to zone, birds of wind a… scavengers.
Legends

FIVE circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook thousands into convulsions o...
North Atlantic

WHEN the sea is everywhere from horizon to horizon .. when the salt and blue fill a circle of horizons .. I swear again how I know
Soiled Dove

LET us be honest; the lady was no… married a corporation lawyer who p… a Ziegfeld chorus. Before then she never took anybody… for her silk stockings out of what…
Whitelight

YOUR whitelight flashes the fros… Moon of the purple and silent west… Remember me one of your lovers of…
Village in Late Summer

LIPS half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hour…
Fire Dreams

I REMEMBER here by the fire, In the flickering reds and saffron… They came in a ramshackle tub, Pilgrims in tall hats, Pilgrims of iron jaws, 5
From the Shore

A LONE gray bird, Dim-dipping, far-flying, Alone in the shadows and grandeurs… Of night and the sea And the stars and storms.
Three Pieces on the Smoke of Autumn

In the pocket of the first, the earliest evening star.. . . There is a sheet of red ember glow on the river; it is dusk; and the muskrats one by one go on patrol routes west. Arou...
Sixteen Months

ON the lips of the child Janet fl… It is a thin spiral of blue smoke, A morning campfire at a mountain l… On the lips of the child Janet, Wisps of haze on ten miles of corn…
Iron

GUNS, Long, steel guns, Pointed from the war ships In the name of the war god. Straight, shining, polished guns,
White Hands

FOR the second time in a year thi… Her husband is a cornice manufactu… Yesterday she washed her hands for… Now the head physician touches his…



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