Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Smoke and Steel. 1922.

IV. Playthings of the Wind

1. Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind

THE WOMAN named To-morrow

sits with a hairpin in her teeth

and takes her time

and does her hair the way she wants it

and fastens at last the last braid and coil

and puts the hairpin where it belongs

and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?

My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.

What of it? Let the dead be dead.

The doors were cedar

and the panels strips of gold

and the girls were golden girls

and the panels read and the girls chanted:

We are the greatest city,

the greatest nation:

nothing like us ever was.

The doors are twisted on broken hinges.

Sheets of rain swish through on the wind

where the golden girls ran and the panels read:

We are the greatest city,

the greatest nation,

nothing like us ever was.

It has happened before.

Strong men put up a city and got

a nation together,

And paid singers to sing and women

to warble: We are the greatest city,

the greatest nation,

nothing like us ever was.

And while the singers sang

and the strong men listened

and paid the singers well

and felt good about it all,

there were rats and lizards who listened

… and the only listeners left now

… are … the rats … and the lizards.

And there are black crows

crying, “Caw, caw,”

bringing mud and sticks

building a nest

over the words carved

on the doors where the panels were cedar

and the strips on the panels were gold

and the golden girls came singing:

We are the greatest city,

the greatest nation:

nothing like us ever was.

The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,”

And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways.

And the only listeners now are … the rats … and the lizards.

The feet of the rats

scribble on the door sills;

the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints

chatter the pedigrees of the rats

and babble of the blood

and gabble of the breed

of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers

of the rats.

And the wind shifts

and the dust on a door sill shifts

and even the writing of the rat footprints

tells us nothing, nothing at all

about the greatest city, the greatest nation

where the strong men listened

and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.