1. Home »
  2. American Poets »
  3. Carl Sandburg

Monosyllabic

by Carl Sandburg

Carl Sandburg

LET me be monosyllabic to-day, O Lord.
Yesterday I loosed a snarl of words on a fool,
on a child.
To-day, let me be monosyllabic … a crony of old men
who wash sunlight in their fingers and
enjoy slow-pacing clocks.




Quotes of the Day

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.

• Salvatore Quasimodo



Poems of the Day
  • Elizabeth Bishop
    Questions of Travel
    by Elizabeth Bishop
    There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams hurry too rapidly down to the sea, and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,