Sandburg - Honey and Salt

Copyright 1953, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1963 by Carl Sandburg All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information, storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003. www.hmhco.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN 0-15-642165-8 (Harvest/HBJ pbk.) e ISBN 978-0-544-41693-2
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A bag of tricksis it? And a game smoothies play? If youre good with a deck of cards or rolling the bonesthat helps? If you can tell jokes and be a chum and make an impressionthat helps? When boy meets girl or girl meets boy what helps? They all help: be cozy but not too cozy: be shy, bashful, mysterious, yet only so-so: then forget everything you ever heard about love for its a summer tan and a winter windburn and it comes as weather comes and you cant change it: it comes like your face came to you, like your legs came and the way you walk, talk, hold your head and hands and nothing can be done about ityou wait and pray. Is there any way of measuring love? Yes but not till long afterward when the beat of your heart has gone many miles, far into the big numbers.

Is the key to love in passion, knowledge, affection? All threealong with moonlight, roses, groceries, givings and forgivings, gettings and forgettings, keepsakes and room rent, pearls of memory along with ham and eggs. Can love be locked away and kept hid? Yes and it gathers dust and mildew and shrivels itself in shadows unless it learns the sun can help, snow, rain, storms can help birds in their one-room family nests shaken by winds cruel and crazy they can all help: lock not away your love nor keep it hid. How comes the first sign of love? In a chill, in a personal sweat, in a you-and-me, us, us two, In a couple of answers, an amethyst haze on the horizon, two dance programs criss-crossed, jackknifed initials interwoven, five fresh violets lost in sea salt, birds flying at single big moments in and out a thousand windows, a horse, two horses, many horses, a silver ring, a brass cry, a golden gong going ong ong ong-ng-ng, pink doors closing one by one to sunset nightsongs along the west, shafts and handles of stars, folds of moonmist curtains, winding and unwinding wips of fogmist. How long does love last? As long as glass bubbles handled with care or two hot-house orchids in a blizzard or one solid immovable steel anvil tempered in sure inexorable welding or again love might last as six snowflakes, six hexagonal snowflakes, six floating hexagonal flakes of snow or the oaths between hydrogen and oxygen in one cup of spring water or the eyes of bucks and does or two wishes riding on the back of a morning wind in winter or one corner of an ancient tabernacle held sacred for personal devotions or dust yes dust in a little solemn heap played on by changing winds. There are sanctuaries holding honey and salt. There are those who spill and spend.

There are those who search and save. And love may be a quest with silence and content. Can you buy love? Sure every day with money, clothes, candy, with promises, flowers, big-talk, with laughter, sweet-talk, lies, every day men and women buy love and take it away and things happen and they study about it and the longer they look at it the more it isnt love they bought at all: bought love is a guaranteed imitation. Can you sell love? Yes you can sell it and take the price and think it over and look again at the price and cry and cry to yourself and wonder who was selling what and why. Evensong lights floating black night waters, a lagoon of stars washed in velvet shadows, a great storm cry from white sea-horses these moments cost beyond all prices.

The doors of the morning must open. The doors of the morning must open.

The keys of the night are not thrown away. I who have loved morning know its doors. I who have loved night know its keys.

I There must be a place a room and a sanctuary set apart for silence for shadows and roses holding aware in walls the sea and its secrets gong clamor gone still in a long deep sea-wash aware always of gongs vanishing before shadows of roses repeating themes of ferns standing still till wind blows over them: great hunger may bring these into one little room set apart for silence II There must be substance here related to old communions of hungering men and women brass is a hard lean metal gold is the most ductile metal they speak to each other not often they melt and fuse only in the crucible of this communion only in the dangers of high moments they moan as mist before wind III The shuttlings of dawn color go soft weaving out of the night of black ice with crimson ramblers up the latticed ladders of daytime arriving. The riders of the sea the long white horses they send their plungers obedient to the moon in a dedicated path of foam and rainbows. The praise of any slow red moonrise should be slow.

There are storm winds who bow down to nothing. They go on relentless under command and release sent out to do their hammering whirls of storm. There are sunset flames inviting prayer and sharing. There are time pieces having silence between chimes. Children of the wind keep their childish ways. The wisps of blue in a smoke wreath are mortal.

The keepers of wisdom testify a heap of ashes means whatever was there went out burning.

The birdsare they worth remembering? Is flight a wonder and one wingtip a space marvel? When will man know what birds know? love is a deep and a dark and a lonely and you take it deep take it dark and take it with a lonely winding and when the winding gets too lonely then may come the windflowers and the breath of wind over many flowers winding its way out of many lonely flowers waiting in rainleaf whispers waiting in dry stalks of noon wanting in a music of windbreaths so you can take love as it comes keening as it comes with a voice and a face and you make a talk of it talking to yourself a talk worth keeping and you put it away for a keen keeping and you find it to be a hoarding and you give it away and yet it stays hoarded like a book read over and over again like one book being a long row of books like leaves of windflowers bending low and bending to be never broken Scrutinize the Scorpion constellation and see where a hook of stars ends with a lonely star. Go to the grey sea horizon and ask for a message and listen and wait. See whether the conundrums of a heavy land fog either sing or talk. Let only a small cry come in behalf of a clean sunrise: the sun performs so often. Speak to the branches of spring and the surprise of blossoms: they too hope for a good year.

Search the first winter snowstorm for a symphonic arrangement: it is always there. Take an alphabet of gold or mud and spell as you wish any words: kiss me, kill me, love, hate, ice, thought, victory. Read the numbers on your wrist watch and ask: is being born, being loved, being dead, nothing but numbers?

A biography, sirs, should beginwith the breath of a man when his eyes first meet the light of daythen working on through to the death when the light of day is gone: so the biography then is finishedunless you reverse the order and begin with the death and work back to the birth starting the life with a coffin, moving back to a cradle in which case, sirs, the biography has arrived, is completed when you have your subject born, except for ancestry, lineage, forbears, pedigree, blood, breed, bones, backgrounds and these, sirs, may be carried far. Next page