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Home  »  Chicago Poems  »  26. Cripple

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

26. Cripple

ONCE when I saw a cripple

Gasping slowly his last days with the white plague,

Looking from hollow eyes, calling for air,

Desperately gesturing with wasted hands

In the dark and dust of a house down in a slum,

I said to myself

I would rather have been a tall sunflower

Living in a country garden

Lifting a golden-brown face to the summer,

Rain-washed and dew-misted,

Mixed with the poppies and ranking hollyhocks,

And wonderingly watching night after night

The clear silent processionals of stars.