What's O'Clock/To Carl Sandburg

by Amy Lowell

TO CARL SANDBURG

I think I am cousin-german to Endymion,
Certainly I have loved the moon a long time.

I have seen her, a faint conceit of silver,
Shooting little silver arrows into a marsh pool at twilight.
I have seen her, high, round, majestic,
Making herself a jewel of fire out of a sea bay.
I have seen the morning moon, grievously battered,
Limping down a coloured sky.
To-night I saw an evening moon
Dodging between tree-branches
Through a singing silence of crickets,
And a man was singing songs to a black-backed guitar.

To-day I saw a country I knew well but had never seen.
A country where corn runs a mile or more to a tree-line,
A country where a river, brown as bronze, streaked green with the flowing heads of water-plants,
Slips between a field of apples and a field of wheat.
A country where the eye seeks a long way
And comes back on the curve of a round sky,
Satisfied with greens and blues, tired with the stretch and exhilarated by it.

The moon stops a moment in a hole between leaves
And tells me a new story,
The story of a man who lives in a house with a pear-tree before the door,
A story of little green pears changing and ripening,
Of long catalpa pods turning yellow through September days.
There is a woman in the house, and children,
And, out beyond, the corn-fields are sleeping and the trees are whispering to the fire-flies.
So I have seen the man's country, and heard his songs before there are words to them.
And the moon said to me: "This now I give you," and went on, stepping through the leaves.
And the man went on singing, picking out his accompaniment softly on the black-backed guitar.