Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 1912–22.
The Next Child Waits
By Carl Sandburg
From “Redhaw Winds”
I KNOW the city waits … the next child waits … there is a great singing Mother.
Our earth of a turning ball—who set it swinging? A great Nobody? Who put the People down on the wire-grass wilderness? A great Nobody?
I have listened to the tides of the sea trying to spell the word. I have walked under tall trees and heard winter winds trying to write the high sign of it. I have felt the magnet pull of it under the shoes of my feet in the dirt of a prairie road.
I know the city waits … the next child waits … there is a great singing Mother.
