The Answer by Carl Sandburg

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend January 3, 2016   The Answer   Carl Sandburg

You have spoken the answer. A child searches far sometimes Into the red dust                           On a dark rose leaf And so you have gone far                          For the answer is:                                                  Silence.      In the republic Of the winking stars                           and spent cataclysms Sure we are it is off there the answer is hidden and folded over, Sleeping in the sun, careless whether it is Sunday or any other day        of the week,   Knowing silence will bring all one way or another.   Have we not seen Purple of the pansy                    out of the mulch                    and mold                    crawl                    into a dusk                    of velvet?                    blur of yellow? Almost we thought from nowhere but it was the silence,                    the future,                    working.            This poem is in the public domain. About This Poem   “The Answer” was published in Sandburg’s book Chicago Poems (H. Holt and Company, 1916).   Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Illinois in 1878. He published numerous books of poetry and won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. Sandburg died in Flat Rock, North Carolina, in 1967.   Photo credit: Elizabeth Buehrmann Poetry by Sandburg   The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003) "Silence" by Marianne Moore "It was a hard thing to undo this knot" by Gerard Manley Hopkins "from Oracles for Youth" by Caroline Gilman Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038