dots-menu
×

Home  »  Chicago Poems  »  134. The Noon Hour

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Chicago Poems. 1916.

134. The Noon Hour

SHE sits in the dust at the walls

And makes cigars,

Bending at the bench

With fingers wage-anxious,

Changing her sweat for the day’s pay.

Now the noon hour has come,

And she leans with her bare arms

On the window-sill over the river,

Leans and feels at her throat

Cool-moving things out of the free open ways:

At her throat and eyes and nostrils

The touch and the blowing cool

Of great free ways beyond the walls.