| Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Smoke and Steel. 1922. |
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| V. Mist Forms |
| 43. Chasers |
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| THE SEA at its worst drives a white foam up, | |
| The same sea sometimes so easy and rocking with green mirrors. | |
| So you were there when the white foam was up | |
| And the salt spatter and the rack and the dulse— | |
| You were done fingering these, and high, higher and higher | 5 |
| Your feet went and it was your voice went, “Hai, hai, hai,” | |
| Up where the rocks let nothing live and the grass was gone, | |
| Not even a hank nor a wisp of sea moss hoping. | |
| Here your feet and your same singing, “Hai, hai, hai.” | |
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| Was there anything else to answer than, “Hai, hai, hai,”? | 10 |
| Did I go up those same crags yesterday and the day before | |
| Scruffing my shoe leather and scraping the tough gnomic stuff | |
| Of stones woven on a cold criss-cross so long ago? | |
| Have I not sat there … watching the white foam up, | |
| The hoarse white lines coming to curve, foam, slip back? | 15 |
| Didn’t I learn then how the call comes, “Hai, hai, hai”? | |
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