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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Carl Sandburg

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Night Movement—New York

Carl Sandburg

From “Smoke Nights”

IN the night, when the sea-winds take the city in their arms,

And cool the loud streets that kept their dust noon and afternoon;

In the night, when the sea-birds call to the lights of the city,

The lights that cut on the skyline their name of a city;

In the night, when the trains and wagons start from a long way off

For the city where the people ask bread and want letters;

In the night the city lives too—the day is not all.

In the night there are dancers dancing and singers singing,

And the sailors and soldiers look for numbers on doors.

In the night the sea-winds take the city in their arms.