| Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Cornhuskers. 1918. |
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| 92. Flanders |
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| FLANDERS, the name of a place, a country of people, | |
| Spells itself with letters, is written in books. | |
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| “Where is Flanders?” was asked one time, | |
| Flanders known only to those who lived there | |
| And milked cows and made cheese and spoke the home language. | 5 |
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| “Where is Flanders?” was asked. | |
| And the slang adepts shot the reply: Search me. | |
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| A few thousand people milking cows, raising radishes, | |
| On a land of salt grass and dunes, sand-swept with a sea-breath on it: | |
| This was Flanders, the unknown, the quiet, | 10 |
| The place where cows hunted lush cuds of green on lowlands, | |
| And the raw-boned plowmen took horses with long shanks | |
| Out in the dawn to the sea-breath. | |
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| Flanders sat slow-spoken amid slow-swung windmills, | |
| Slow-circling windmill arms turning north or west, | 15 |
| Turning to talk to the swaggering winds, the childish winds, | |
| So Flanders sat with the heart of a kitchen girl | |
| Washing wooden bowls in the winter sun by a window. | |
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