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

83. The Answer

YOU have spoken the answer.

A child searches far sometimes

Into the red dust

On a dark rose leaf

And so you have gone far

For the answer is:

Silence.

In the republic

Of the winking stars

and spent cataclysms

Sure we are it is off there the answer

is hidden and folded over,

Sleeping in the sun, careless whether

it is Sunday or any other day of

the week,

Knowing silence will bring all one way or another.

Have we not seen

Purple of the pansy

out of the mulch

and mold

crawl

into a dusk

of velvet?

blur of yellow?

Almost we thought from nowhere but it was the silence,

the future,

working.