Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Smoke and Steel. 1922.

III. Broken-Face Gargoyles

11. Pick Offs

THE TELESCOPE picks off star dust

on the clean steel sky and sends it to me.

The telephone picks off my voice and

sends it cross country a thousand miles.

The eyes in my head pick off pages of

Napoleon memoirs … a rag handler,

a head of dreams walks in a sheet of

mist … the palace panels shut in nobodies

drinking nothings out of silver

helmets … in the end we all come to a

rock island and the hold of the sea-walls.