Chicago Poems

Give me hunger, pain and want, Shut me out with shame and failure From your doors of gold and fame, Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger! But leave me a little love.

HAPPINESS I ASKED the 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.

I cannot tell you now; When the wind's drive and whirl Blow me along no longer, And the wind's a whisper at last - Maybe I'll tell you then some other time.

Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders:

Out of the whirling womb of time come millions of men and their feet crowd the earth and they cut one another's throats for room to stand and among them all are not two thumbs alike.

Passers-by Passers-by, Out of your many faces Flash memories to me Now at the day end Away from the sidewalks Where your shoe soles traveled And your voices rose and blent To form the city’s afternoon roar Hindering an old silence. Passers-by, I remember lean ones among you, Throats in the clutch of a hope, Lips written over with strivings, Mouths that kiss only for love, Records of great wishes slept with, Held long And prayed and toiled for: Yes, Written on Your mouths And your throats I read them When you passed by.

Last Answers I wrote a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,

Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the earth and hold the building to a turning planet.

The dead say nothing And the dead know much And the dead hold under their tongues A locked-up story.

The worn wayfaring men With the hunched and humble shoulders, Throw their laughter into toil.

I say good-by when I see you going in the doors, The hopeless open doors that call and wait And take you then for- how many cents a day? How many cents for the sleepy eyes and fingers? I say good-by because I know they tap your wrists, In the dark, in the silence, day by day, And all the blood of you drop by drop, And you are old before you are young.

But leave me a little love, A voice to speak to me in the day end, A hand to touch me in the dark room Breaking the long loneliness. In the dusk of day-shapes Blurring the sunset, One little wandering, western star Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow. Let me go to the window, Watch there the day-shapes of dusk And wait and know the coming Of a little love. —Carl Sandburg, from “At the Window,” Chicago Poems (Dover Publications, 1994)

Shirt" I remember once I ran after you and tagged the fluttering shirt of you in the wind. Once many days ago I drank a glassful of something and the picture of you shivered and slid on top of the stuff. And again it was nobody else but you I heard in the singing voice of a careless humming woman. One night when I sat with chums telling stories at a bonfire flickering red embers, in a language its own talking to a spread of white stars: It was you that slunk laughing in the clumsy staggering shadows. Broken answers of remembrance let me know you are alive with a peering phantom face behind a doorway somewhere in the city’s push and fury. Or under a pack of moss and leaves waiting in silence under a twist of oaken arms ready as ever to run away again when I tag the fluttering shirt of you.

And the ring of your heart-deep laughter: It is much to be warm and sure of to-morrow.

Passers-by, Out of your many faces Flash memories to me Now at the day end Away from the sidewalks Where your shoe soles traveled And your voices rose and blent To form the city’s afternoon roar Hindering an old silence.

Dust of the feet And dust of the wheels, Wagons and people going, All day feet and wheels. Now... ...Only stars and mist

Find for your pencils A way to mark your memory