Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Smoke and Steel. 1922.
X. Panels15. For You
T
Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs.
Wait for the great hinges.
Where the players of loft pipe organs
Practice old lovely fragments, alone.
Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages,
Bleach of the light of years held in leather.
Listen among windplayers in cornfields,
The wind learning over its oldest music
Wait on a hook of land, a rock footing
For you, wait in the salt wash.
The sleep and the eyesight of eagles,
Sheet mist shadows and the long look across.
Valves of the blood of the sun,
Pumps of the strongest wants we cry.
Shadow dancers alive in your blood now,
Alive and crying, “Let us out, let us out.”
Whisper, Oh beginners in the hills.
Tumble, Oh cubs—to-morrow belongs to you.
Rain, soak these roots; wind, shatter the dry rot.
Bars of sunlight, grips of the earth, hug these.
Phantoms of night-gray eyes, ready to go
To the fog-star dumps, to the fire-white doors.
Phantom iron men, mothers of bronze,
Keepers of the lean clean breeds.