| Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Smoke and Steel. 1922. |
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| V. Mist Forms |
| 33. Wind Song |
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| LONG ago I learned how to sleep, | |
| In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away, | |
| In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all, | |
| In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, “Who, who are you?” | |
| I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer afternoon and there I took a sleep lesson. | 5 |
| There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, I know how they trap the tricky winds. | |
| Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine, | |
| Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars: | |
| Who, who are you? | |
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| Who can ever forget | 10 |
| listening to the wind go by | |
| counting its money | |
| and throwing it away? | |
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