The Republic is a dream. Nothing happens unless first a dream. - Carl Sandburg

Nothing happens unless first a dream.

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

Maybe the morning sun is a five-cent yellow balloon,
And the evening stars the joke of a God gone crazy.
Maybe the mothers of the world,
And the life that pours from their torsal folds — Maybe it’s all a lie sworn by liars,
And a God with a cackling laughter says:
“I, the Almighty God,
I have made all this,
I have made it for kaisers, czars and kings.

When the rose’s flash to the sunset
Reels to the wrack and the twist,
And the rose is a red bygone,
When the face I love is going
And the gate to the end shall clang,
And it’s no use to beckon or say, “So long” — Maybe I’ll tell you then — some other time.