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

117. Poems Done on a Late Night Car

I. CHICKENS

I AM The Great White Way of the city:

When you ask what is my desire, I answer:

“Girls fresh as country wild flowers,

With young faces tired of the cows and barns,

Eager in their eyes as the dawn to find my mysteries,

Slender supple girls with shapely legs,

Lure in the arch of their little shoulders

And wisdom from the prairies to cry only softly at the ashes of my mysteries.”

II. USED UP
Lines based on certain regrets that come with rumination upon the painted faces of women on North Clark Street, Chicago

Roses,

Red roses,

Crushed

In the rain and wind

Like mouths of women

Beaten by the fists of

Men using them.

O little roses

And broken leaves

And petal wisps:

You that so flung your crimson

To the sun

Only yesterday.

III. HOME

Here is a thing my heart wishes the world had more of:

I heard it in the air of one night when I listened

To a mother singing softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness.