Happy Birthday, Carl

Today in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1878 Carl Sandburg was born.

A couple of his shorter works:

Troths

Yellow dust on a bumble
        bee's wing,
Grey lights in a woman's
        asking eyes,
Red ruins in the changing
        sunset embers:
I take you and pile high
        the memories.
Death will break her claws
        on some I keep.


Hydrangeas

Dragoons, I tell you the white hydrangeas
        turn rust and go soon.
Already mid September a line of brown runs
        over them.
One sunset after another tracks the faces, the
        petals.
Waiting, they look over the fence for what
        way they go.


Bones

Sling me under the sea.
Pack me down in the salt and wet.
No farmer's plow shall touch my bones.
No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak
How jokes are gone and empty is my mouth.
Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes,
Purple fish play hide-and-seek,
And I shall be song of thunder, crash of sea,
Down on the floors of salt and wet.
            Sling me . . . under the sea.


(Many more of Sandburg's poems here)