Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916.

108. 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,

And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color.

I answered:

The whole world was mist once long ago and some day it will all go back to mist,

Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue

And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers

Go running back to dust and mist.