Chicago Poems Quotes

“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.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“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.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“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.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“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.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“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:”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“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.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“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,”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“Hour by hour the caissons reach down to the rock of the earth and hold the building to a turning planet.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“The dead say nothing
And the dead know much
And the dead hold under their tongues
A locked-up story.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“And the ring of your heart-deep laughter:
It is much to be warm and sure of to-morrow.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“The worn wayfaring men
With the hunched and humble shoulders,
Throw their laughter into toil.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“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.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“Dust of the feet
And dust of the wheels,
Wagons and people going,
All day feet and wheels.

Now...
...Only stars and mist”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“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.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“Find for your pencils
A way to mark your memory”
― Carl Sandburg , Chicago Poems

“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)”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems

“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.”
― Carl Sandburg, Chicago Poems