Download file (PDF, 45 KB)

Download file (PDF, 70 KB)

Download file (PDF, 241 KB)

There are no handles upon a language
Whereby men take hold of it
And mark it with signs for its remembrance.
It is a river, this language,
Once in a thousand years
Breaking a new course
Changing its way to the ocean.
It is mountain effluvia
Moving to valleys
And from nation to nation
Crossing borders and mixing.
Languages die like rivers.
Words wrapped round your tongue today
Between your teeth and lips speaking
Now and today
Shall be faded hieroglyphics
Ten thousand years from now.
Sing—and singing—remember
Your song dies and changes
And is not here to-morrow
Any more than the wind
Blowing ten thousand years ago.

Listen to the podcast

Dream Girl by Carl Sandburg

You will come one day in a waver of love,
Tender as dew, impetuous as rain,
The tan of the sun will be on your skin,
The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech,
You will pose with a hill-flower grace.

You will come, with your slim, expressive arms,
A poise of the head no sculptor has caught
And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck,
Your face in a pass-and-repass of moods
As many as skies in delicate change
Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.

Yet,
You may not come, O girl of a dream,
We may but pass as the world goes by
And take from a look of eyes into eyes,
A film of hope and a memoried day.

'Cake' by Todd Colby

I'm so full of cake
If I ate any more cake
I'd have to vomit first
I could eat a cake a day
Sometimes two three cakes
In a single day

I love cake!

I can't be any clearer than that.

I love cake!

I could eat every cake in New York City
I can't even go into bakeries anymore
Because I'll eat all the cake
I'll say "Where's the cake?
I love cake
Get me some cake!"

And they'll say
"We know how much you love cake
And we know that you very rarely
Have the money to buy our cake
So you can't come in here because
You can't afford the cake
But you love cake
So get out of here
You can not have any cake
You don't have the money
To buy any of our cake!"

I'll punch somebody in the head for some cake.

Give me all your cake!

I love cake!

Gimme the cake!

Now!

I love it!

I love cake!

Gimme your cake!

Give me all your cake!

I love cake!

Gimme the cake!

Now!

I love it!

I love cake!

Gimme your cake!

[sinister laugh]

Submitted in response to Kenny G's call for 'Cake' covers.

GOVERNMENT by Carl Sandburg

The Government—I heard about the Government and I went out to find it. I said I would look closely at it when I saw it.
Then I saw a policeman dragging a drunken man to the callaboose. It was the Government in action.
I saw a ward alderman slip into an office one morning and talk with a judge. Later in the day the judge dismissed a case against a pickpocket who was a live ward worker for the alderman. Again I saw this was the Government, doing things.
I saw militiamen level their rifles at a crowd of workingmen who were trying to get other workingmen to stay away from a shop where there was a strike on. Government in action.

Everywhere I saw that Government is a thing made of men, that Government has blood and bones, it is many mouths whispering into many ears, sending telegrams, aiming rifles, writing orders, saying "yes" and "no."

Government dies as the men who form it die and are laid away in their graves and the new Government that comes after is human, made of heartbeats of blood, ambitions, lusts, and money running through it all, money paid and money taken, and money covered up and spoken of with hushed voices.

A Government is just as secret and mysterious and sensitive as any human sinner carrying a load of germs, traditions and corpuscles handed down from fathers and mothers away back.

POEMS DONE ON A LATE NIGHT CAR by Carl Sandburg

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 singly softly to a child restless and angry in the darkness.

The Village Blacksmith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
   The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
   With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
   Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
   His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
   He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
   For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
   You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
   With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
   When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
   Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
   And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
   Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
   And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
   He hears his daughter's voice,
Singing in the village choir,
   And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
   Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
   How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
   A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling, — rejoicing, — sorrowing,
   Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
   Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
   Has earned a night's repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
   For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
   Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
   Each burning deed and thought.

Beauty Bathing in the River by Farooq Shooshah

The sea of passion,
Dripping from her eyes,
Generating precious pearls,
Tempted the waves to call her,
And make her yield.
She had been in seclusion on the bank!
Around her seagulls leaped
And flew by turns,
But she intently stared
At the quivering water,
Unable to undress
To witness her bare truth,
The perfection of feminine
Splendour in her!
Now melting in the embrace,
Dreading the approach of the waning pace,
She's shaken to the bone by a tremor!
Beauty does her ablution in her river.
Here is
A river of milk,
A river of light,
A river of streaming milky light;
Shades of evergreen cypresses
Stretch their palms above her,
Announcing,
At the revelation of the body,
Getting ready to start,
That an hour may be spent,
Whilst she is about to depart!
The river,
Which has been lying in wait,
Now bathes in Beauty,
Having cast off his diffidence,
Extends his fingers
To the perfection of magnificence,
Is tempted to hold a dialogue,
But as she wouldn't respond,
He makes do with the revealing touch!
Bathing is she in the daylight!
She puts off drying her body
Until evening,
With musk anointing
All her appointments,
Dreaming of the golden knight,
Recalling the flashing light!

* * *

My icon is filled with a solid body,
A staring body,
WIth reverberating breaths
In the space hanging down,
Which set oil on fire,
Free a bird that flaps its wings,
Dropping its fore-feathers
On the ruby of the heart;
The dancing flame is extinguished,
But the light survives
In a look, agitated!
Are you a eucalyptus tree?
Or an ancient time?
Your eyes:
Were they one day
The tips of two cups, tremulous,
Whose light leapt about
With pure nectar
Unveiling beauty's burden
And the latent desire of men,
The scorching burn
Of lightnings!
Beauty now proposes a toast,
To all those gathered around
Her windows, waiting
For the times of her awakening—
The corridors of her passion.
The soaring beam, shooting,
Announcing that a unique glory looks on,
That people crane their necks,
Trying to capture the immininent moment!
But do they know
That Beauty's steps to the river
Are hesitant,
And that she, in spite of her beauty crown,
Is frightened?
Only the river knows
When her lineaments are submerged
When her charms are embraced,
That she went into the water,
In fear!

* * *

What a figure!
Oh, for your high stature!
Do the roots of its features
Extend deep in
The amber earth?
Will it,
When legs are intertwined
Or looking up to a date at night,
Draw its charmed curtains
And fire of burning longings—
When she drinks, from the river honey,
Her brightness,
To light up the eyes of her lanterns,
The branches carrying her bunches of grapes,
Swaying on her bank,
Standing!
Did she see what her lovers saw?
Did she hear
What the winds have roared
To one another,
In the farthest solitudes?
Did she realize
That she was the target of slander,
When the heads met of palm trees
And of tall reeds,
To declare that 'Beauty',
Who's in love with the river,
Was unfaithful,
That her worship rites were false?

* * *

In a morning that never came,
She left.
Some say
She stood on the bank
In perplexity,
Looking round as though
Chased out by townsfolk
And everybody's eyes,
Whilst she still stood
Trembling!
It was said:
There she was, naked,
Having emerged from the river's mouth,
Fled the embrace of the dodging lover,
To look for a fig-leaf
With which to hide 'herself',
Covering 'herself' with both hands,
For fear of scandal.
It was said:
She felt it was late
And so proceeded,
Caring nought for those who whispered,
Or looked,
Or cursed.
She listened, intently,
Perhaps a new morrow will come,
When she might replace
One people with another,
One face with another,
Cursing all her followers,
Sect by sect!
Whatever has changed the river,
Giving it blood-colour?
Has she anything left,
Apart from that taste, so bitter?
She filled her lungs
With a breeze blowing,
Then went away, bleeding!

Today we read from Beauty Bathing in the River by Farooq Shooshah, an Egyptian poet.

The Absent Painting by Farooq Shooshah

We can, in the absence of land,
Imagine a map,
And borders,
Then fill the borders with points,
So that the points grow into circles,
With a homeland therefrom emerging
And faces, wherein absence is nesting!
We shall live in them,
Move among the geographical features
And try to recover
That which is still far away,
Cast a look at the impossible horizon,
There!
There's no sound for the map to utter
There!
There is no colour
To leap among the circles,
No green,
No sand
Or water!
There!
Only the colour of blood,
And an elusive mirage!
But then we have the dream,
And we dream that
Here are home and byre,
A gate and bower!
And here is Palestinian thyme,
The vine and sweet odour!
An olive-tree waiting alone in patience
For the sad autumn
And the acrid winter,
The cellars of fire
And the slaughter!
Then,
Gradually,
They all vanish—the shades,
And the distance!
But here are our fingers,
Still holding the absent painting
And drawing lines
In a map in the clouds
Feelings moist with the tears
Rising from the heart!
We make a search
Among the points,
The circles
The lines
And crossing points,
And feel about to cry
When silence prevails within,
But we
Never
Die!

Dreams in the Dusk by Carl Sandburg

Dreams in the dusk,
Only dreams closing the day
And with the day's close going back
To the gray things, the dark things,
The far, deep things of dreamland.

Dreams, only dreams in the dusk,
Only the old remembered pictures
Of lost days when the day's loss
Wrote in tears the heart's loss.

Tears and loss and broken dreams
May find your heart at dusk.

Listen to the Podcast

Gypsy by Carl Sandburg

I asked a gypsy pal
To imitate an old image
And speak old wisdom.
She drew in her chin,
Made her neck and head
The top piece of a Nile obelisk
     and said:
Snatch off the gag from thy mouth, child,
And be free to keep silence.
Tell no man anything for no man listens,
Yet hold thy lips ready to speak.

Listen to the Podcast

For this first podcast, I read Carl Sandburg's poem Happiness.

Happiness by Carl Sandburg

I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

Listen to podcast