A One Hundred and Ten-Year-Old Poem

 

When I think of Carl Sandburg poems the first that comes to mind is Fog because that is the one my grade school teacher read to us and then led in discussing its symbolism and meaning. 

Knowing me and my way of thinking, I probably thought something like: "But how can that be a poem? It doesn't rhyme."

The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on.

Something about it stuck because I've never forgotten it. As I got older I could appreciate what a wonderful picture its brevity portrayed.

If you can make it out, you will see other poems by Sandburg listed on this cover......including....

At A Window

Give me hunger,

O you gods that sit and give

The world its orders.

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,

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. 

Because of his gritty Chicago poems like the one entitled Chicago that begins with the first line: Hog Butcher for the world, I never thought of Sandburg as a romantic poet. At A Window gives me a different perspective of him - and prompts me to read more of his poetry.

(This photo of the last quarter of the crescent moon (upper right) and Venus (middle left) is one I took four years ago on this date.)