Written by
Russell Edson |
Since the fern can't go to the sink for a drink of
water, I graciously submit myself to the task, bringing two
glasses from the sink.
And so we sit, the fern and I, sipping water together.
Of course I'm more complex than a fern, full of deep
thoughts as I am. But I lay this aside for the easy company
of an afternoon friendship.
I don't mind sipping water with a fern, even though,
had I my druthers, I'd be speeding through the sky for
Stockholm, sipping a bloody mary with a wedge of lime.
And so we sit one lonely afternoon sipping water
together. The fern looking out of its fronds, and I, looking
out of mine . . .
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Written by
Carl Sandburg |
THIS Mohammedan colonel from the Caucasus yells with his voice and wigwags with his arms.
The interpreter translates, “I was a friend of Kornilov, he asks me what to do and I tell him.”
A stub of a man, this Mohammedan colonel … a projectile shape … a bald head hammered …
“Does he fight or do they put him in a cannon and shoot him at the enemy?”
This fly-by-night, this bull-roarer who knows everybody.
“I write forty books, history of Islam, history of Europe, true religion, scientific farming, I am the Roosevelt of the Caucasus, I go to America and ride horses in the moving pictures for $500,000, you get $50,000 …”
“I have 30,000 acres in the Caucasus, I have a stove factory in Petrograd the bolsheviks take from me, I am an old friend of the Czar, I am an old family friend of Clemenceau …”
These hands strangled three fellow workers for the czarist restoration, took their money, sent them in sacks to a river bottom … and scandalized Stockholm with his gang of strangler women.
Mid-sea strangler hands rise before me illustrating a wish, “I ride horses for the moving pictures in America, $500,000, and you get ten per cent …”
This rider of fugitive dawns.…
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Written by
Carl Sandburg |
CAST a bronze of my head and legs and put them on the king’s street.
Set the cast of me here alongside Carl XII, making two Carls for the Swedish people and the utlanders to look at between the palace and the Grand Hotel.
The summer sun will shine on both the Carls, and November drizzles wrap the two, one in tall leather boots, one in wool leggins.
Also I place it in the record: the Swedish people may name boats after me or change the name of a long street and give it one of my nicknames.
The old men who beset the soil of Sweden and own the titles to the land—the old men who enjoy a silken shimmer to their chin whiskers when they promenade the streets named after old kings—if they forget me—the old men whose varicose veins stand more and more blue on the calves of their legs when they take their morning baths attended by old women born to the bath service of old men and young—if these old men say another King Carl should have a bronze on the king’s street rather than a Fool Carl—
Then I would hurl them only another fool’s laugh—
I would remember last Sunday when I stood on a jutland of fire-born red granite watching the drop of the sun in the middle of the afternoon and the full moon shining over Stockholm four o’clock in the afternoon.
If the young men will read five lines of one of my poems I will let the kings have all the bronze—I ask only that one page of my writings be a knapsack keepsake of the young men who are the bloodkin of those who laughed nine hundred years ago: We are afraid of nothing—only—the sky may fall on us.
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Written by
Carl Sandburg |
STRONG rocks hold up the riksdag bridge … always strong river waters shoving their shoulders against them …
In the riksdag to-night three hundred men are talking to each other about more potatoes and bread for the Swedish people to eat this winter.
In a boat among calm waters next to the running waters a fisherman sits in the dark and I, leaning at a parapet, see him lift a net and let it down … he waits … the waters run … the riksdag talks … he lifts the net and lets it down …
Stars lost in the sky ten days of drizzle spread over the sky saying yes-yes.
Every afternoon at four o’clock fifteen apple women who have sold their apples in Christiania meet at a coffee house and gab.
Every morning at nine o’clock a girl wipes the windows of a hotel across the street from the post-office in Stockholm.
I have pledged them when I go to California next summer and see the orange groves splattered with yellow balls
I shall remember other people half way round the world.
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Written by
Carl Sandburg |
LET us go out of the fog, John, out of the filmy persistent drizzle on the streets of Stockholm, let us put down the collars of our raincoats, take off our hats and sit in the newspapers office.
Let us sit among the telegrams—clickety-click—the kaiser’s crown goes into the gutter and the Hohenzollern throne of a thousand years falls to pieces a one-hoss shay.
It is a fog night out and the umbrellas are up and the collars of the raincoats—and all the steamboats up and down the Baltic sea have their lights out and the wheelsmen sober.
Here the telegrams come—one king goes and another—butter is costly: there is no butter to buy for our bread in Stockholm—and a little patty of butter costs more than all the crowns of Germany.
Let us go out in the fog, John, let us roll up our raincoat collars and go on the streets where men are sneering at the kings.
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