Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Honey and Salt
Pass, Friend
Alone and Not Alone
Wingtip
Love Is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely
Almanac
Biography
Anecdote of Hemlock for Two Athenians
Dreaming Fool
Lief the Lucky
Bird Footprint
Cahokia
Buyers and Sellers
City Number
Chromo
The Evening Sunsets Witness and Pass On
Deep Sea Wandering
Call the Next Witness
Early Copper
Atlas, How Have You Been?
Cheap Rent
Elm Buds
Child Face
Fog Numbers
Evening Questions
Fifty-Fifty
Evening Sea Wind
Forgotten Wars
God Is No Gentleman
Hunger and Cold
Foxgloves
Harvest
Fame If Not Fortune
Impasse
Is Wisdom a Lot of Language?
Keepsake Boxes
Impossible Iambics
Lackawanna Twilight
If So Hap May Be
Kisses, Can You Come Back Like Ghosts?
Lake Michigan Morning
New Weather
Lesson
Metamorphosis
Love Beyond Keeping
Moods
Moon Rondeau
Little Word, Little White Bird
Offering and Rebuff
Morning Glory Blue
High Moments
Mummy
Old Hokusai Print
One Parting
Ever a Seeker
Old Music for Quiet Hearts
Personalia
The Gong of Time
Prairie Woodland
Shadows Fall Blue on the Mountains
Quotations
Skyscrapers Stand Proud
Pool of Bethesda
First Sonata for Karlen Paula
Thou Art Like a Flower
Solo for Saturday Night Guitar
Rose Bawn
Speech
Runaway Colors
Out of the Rainbow End
Sun Dancer
Themes in Contrast
Two Fish
Smoke Shapes
Three Shrines
Variations on a Theme
Timesweep
About the Author
Copyright 1953, © 1958, 1960, 1961, 1963 by Carl Sandburg
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information, storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 0-15-642165-8 (Harvest/HBJ pbk.)
eISBN 978-0-544-41693-2
v1.0215
Honey and Salt
A bag of tricks—is it?
And a game smoothies play?
If you’re good with a deck of cards
or rolling the bones—that helps?
If you can tell jokes and be a chum
and make an impression—that helps?
When boy meets girl or girl meets boy—
what helps?
They all help: be cozy but not too cozy:
be shy, bashful, mysterious, yet only so-so:
then forget everything you ever heard about love
for it’s a summer tan and a winter windburn
and it comes as weather comes and you can’t change it:
it comes like your face came to you, like your legs came
and the way you walk, talk, hold your head and hands—
and nothing can be done about it—you wait and pray.
Is there any way of measuring love?
Yes but not till long afterward
when the beat of your heart has gone
many miles, far into the big numbers.
Is the key to love in passion, knowledge, affection?
All three—along with moonlight, roses, groceries,
givings and forgivings, gettings and forgettings,
keepsakes and room rent,
pearls of memory along with ham and eggs.
Can love be locked away and kept hid?
Yes and it gathers dust and mildew
and shrivels itself in shadows
unless it learns the sun can help,
snow, rain, storms can help—
birds in their one-room family nests
shaken by winds cruel and crazy—
they can all help:
lock not away your love nor keep it hid.
How comes the first sign of love?
In a chill, in a personal sweat,
in a you-and-me, us, us two,
In a couple of answers,
an amethyst haze on the horizon,
two dance programs criss-crossed,
jackknifed initials interwoven,
five fresh violets lost in sea salt,
birds flying at single big moments
in and out a thousand windows,
a horse, two horses, many horses,
a silver ring, a brass cry,
a golden gong going ong ong ong-ng-ng,
pink doors closing one by one
to sunset nightsongs along the west,
shafts and handles of stars,
folds of moonmist curtains,
winding and unwinding wips of fogmist.
How long does love last?
As long as glass bubbles handled with care
or two hot-house orchids in a blizzard
or one solid immovable steel anvil
tempered in sure inexorable welding—
or again love might last as
six snowflakes, six hexagonal snowflakes,
six floating hexagonal flakes of snow
or the oaths between hydrogen and oxygen
in one cup of spring water
or the eyes of bucks and does
or two wishes riding on the back of a
morning wind in winter
or one corner of an ancient tabernacle
held sacred for personal devotions
or dust yes dust in a little solemn heap
played on by changing winds.
There are sanctuaries
holding honey and salt.
There are those who
spill and spend.
There are those who
search and save.
And love may be a quest
with silence and content.
Can you buy love?
Sure every day with money, clothes, candy,
with promises, flowers, big-talk,
with laughter, sweet-talk, lies,
every day men and women buy love
and take it away and things happen
and they study about it
and the longer they look at it
the more it isn’t love they bought at all:
bought love is a guaranteed imitation.
Can you sell love?
Yes you can sell it and take the price
and think it over
and look again at the price
and cry and cry to yourself
and wonder who was selling what and why
.
Evensong lights floating black night waters,
a lagoon of stars washed in velvet shadows,
a great storm cry from white sea-horses—
these moments cost beyond all prices.
Bidden or unbidden? how comes love?
Both bidden and unbidden, a sneak and a shadow,
a dawn in a doorway throwing a dazzle
or a sash of light in a blue fog,
a slow blinking of two red lanterns in river mist
or a deep smoke winding one hump of a mountain
and the smoke becomes a smoke known to your own
twisted individual garments:
the winding of it gets into your walk, your hands,
your face and eyes.
Pass, Friend
The doors of the morning must open.
The keys of the night are not thrown away.
I who have loved morning know its doors.
I who have loved night know its keys.
Alone and Not Alone
I
There must be a place
a room and a sanctuary
set apart for silence
for shadows and roses
holding aware in walls
the sea and its secrets
gong clamor gone still
in a long deep sea-wash
aware always of gongs
vanishing before shadows
of roses repeating themes
of ferns standing still
till wind blows over them:
great hunger may bring these
into one little room
set apart for silence
II
There must be substance here
related to old communions of
hungering men and women—
brass is a hard lean metal
gold is the most ductile metal—
they speak to each other not often
they melt and fuse
only in the crucible of this communion
only in the dangers of high moments—
they moan as mist before wind
III
The shuttlings of dawn color go soft
weaving out of the night of black ice
with crimson ramblers
up the latticed ladders of daytime arriving.
The riders of the sea the long white horses
they send their plungers obedient to the moon
in a dedicated path of foam and rainbows.
The praise of any slow red moonrise should be
slow.
There are storm winds who bow down to
nothing.
They go on relentless under command and
release
sent out to do their hammering whirls of storm.
There are sunset flames inviting prayer and
sharing.
There are time pieces having silence between
chimes.
Children of the wind keep their childish ways.
The wisps of blue in a smoke wreath are mortal.
The keepers of wisdom testify a heap of ashes
means whatever was there went out burning.
Wingtip
The birds—are they worth remembering?
Is flight a wonder and one wingtip a
space marvel?
When will man know what birds know?
Love Is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely
love is a deep and a dark and a lonely
and you take it deep take it dark
and take it with a lonely winding
and when the winding gets too lonely
then may come the windflowers
and the breath of wind over many flowers
winding its way out of many lonely flowers
waiting in rainleaf whispers
waiting in dry stalks of noon
wanting in a music of windbreaths
so you can take love as it comes keening
as it comes with a voice and a face
and you make a talk of it
talking to yourself a talk worth keeping
and you put it away for a keen keeping
and you find it to be a hoarding
and you give it away and yet it stays hoarded
like a book read over and over again
like one book being a long row of books
like leaves of windflowers bending low
and bending to be never broken
Almanac
Scrutinize the Scorpion constellation
and see where a hook of stars
ends with a lonely star.
Go to the grey sea horizon
and ask for a message
and listen and wait.
See whether the conundrums
of a heavy land fog
either sing or talk.
Let only a small cry come
in behalf of a clean sunrise:
the sun performs so often.
Speak to the branches of spring
and the surprise of blossoms:
they too hope for a good year.
Search the first winter snowstorm
for a symphonic arrangement:
it is always there.
Take an alphabet of gold or mud and spell
as you wish any words: kiss me, kill me,
love, hate, ice, thought, victory.
Read the numbers on your wrist watch
and ask: is being born, being loved,
being dead, nothing but numbers?
Biography
A biography, sirs, should begin—with the breath of a
man
when his eyes first meet the light of day—then working
on
through to the death when the light of day is gone:
so the biography then is finished—unless you reverse
the order
and begin with the death and work back to the birth—
starting the life with a coffin, moving back to a cradle—
in which case, sirs, the biography has arrived, is
completed
when you have your subject born, except for ancestry,
lineage,
forbears, pedigree, blood, breed, bones, backgrounds—
and these, sirs, may be carried far.
Anecdote of Hemlock for Two Athenians
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.
Dreaming Fool
I was the first of the fools
(So I dreamed)
And all the fools of the world
were put into me and I was
the biggest fool of all.
Others were fools in the morning
Or in the evening or on Saturdays
Or odd days like Friday the Thirteenth
But me—I was a fool every day in the week
And when asleep I was the sleeping fool.
(So I dreamed.)
Lief the Lucky
Lief Ericson crossed the sea
to get away from a woman—
did he?
I have looked deep into the cist
erns of the stars—
said Lief—and the stars too, every one was a struggler.
My neck shall not be broken without a little battle—
said Lief—and I shall always sing a little in tough weather.
I hunted alligators on the moon and they had excellent teeth for grinding even as the camels had excellent humps for humping—so ran one of his dreams.
He told the crew of a souse who said, Get me drunk and have some fun with me—and his mood changed and he told them it would be grand to travel the sky in a chariot of fire like Elijah.
He saw a soft milk white horse on the, top cone of an iceberg looking for a place to slide down to pearl purple sea foam—and he murmured, “I’ve been lonely too, though never so lonely one wind wouldn’t take me home to the four winds.”
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