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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Carl Sandburg

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

Bas-relief

Carl Sandburg

From “Smoke Nights”

FIVE geese deploy mysteriously.

Onward proudly with flagstaffs,

Hearses with silver bugles,

Bushels of plum-blossoms dropping

For ten mystic web-feet—

Each his own drum-major,

Each charged with the honor

Of the ancient goose nation,

Each with a nose-length surpassing

The nose-lengths of rival nations.

Somberly, slowly, unimpeachably,

Five geese deploy mysteriously.