Carl Sandburg Quotes

A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.

The doorknobs open the doors. The windows are always either open or shut. We are always either upstairs or downstairs in this house. Everything is the same as it always was.

It’s going to come out all right — do you know?
The sun, the birds, the grass — they know.
They get along — and we’ll get along.

Some days will be rainy and you will sit waiting
And the letter you wait for won’t come, 5
And I will sit watching the sky tear off gray and gray
And the letter I wait for won’t come.

To a man across a thousand years I offer a handshake.
I say to him: Brother, make the story short, for the stretch of a thousand years is short.

أنا مثالي، ولا أعلم إلى أين أنا ذاهب، لكني على الطريق.

I’m an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way

Enough small empty boxes thrown into a big empty box fill it full.

The fog comes on little cat feet.

I speak of new cities and new people
I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down,
a sun dropped in the west.
I tell you there is nothing in the world
only an ocean of tomorrows.
a sky of tomorrows.
I am a brother of the cornhuskers who say
at sundown:
Tomorrow is a day.”

- Carl Sandburg, Cornhuskers

You must expect to be in several lost causes before you die.

Let only the young come,
Says the sea.

Let them kiss my face
And hear me.
I am the last word
And I tell
Where storms and stars come from.

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.

Death comes once, let it be easy.

Poetry is the report of a nuance between two moments, when people say 'Listen!' and 'Did you see it?' 'Did you hear it? What was it?'

Poetry is a plan for a slit in the face of a bronze fountain goat and the path of fresh drinking water.

Poetry is a slipknot tightened around a time-beat of one thought, two thoughts, and a last interweaving thought there is not yet a number for.

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly the air.

Poetry is any page from a sketchbook of outlines of a doorknob with thumb-prints of dust, blood, dreams.

Poetry is a type-font design for an alphabet of fun, hate, love, death.

Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.

Poetry is a fresh morning spider-web telling a story of moonlit hours of weaving and waiting during a night.

Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.

Poetry is the establishment of a metaphorical link between white butterfly-wings and the scraps of torn-up love letters.

Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

"…Намерението е едно такова нещо, което те гризе отвътре и ти нашепва тихо "...ела и ме намери, ела и ме намери...