Fog The fog comes          on little cat feet.                      It sits looking                      over harbor and city                         on silent haunches                      and then moves on.
MONOTONE THE monotone of the rain is beautiful, And the sudden rise and slow relapse Of the long multitudinous rain. The sun on the hills is beautiful, Or a captured sunset sea-flung, Bannered with fire and gold. A face I know is beautiful-- With fire and gold of sky and sea, And the peace of long warm rain.	PEARL FOG OPEN the door now. Go roll up the collar of your coat To walk in the changing scarf of mist. Tell your sins here to the pearl fog And know for once a deepening night Strange as the half-meanings Alurk in a wise woman's mousey eyes. Yes, tell your sins And know how careless a pearl fog is Of the laws you have broken.
A SPHINX   CLOSE-MOUTHED you sat five thousand years and never let out a whisper.  Processions came by, marchers, asking questions you  answered with grey eyes never blinking, shut lips  never talking. Not one croak of anything you know has come from your cat crouch of ages.  I am one of those who know all you know and I keep my questions: I know the answers you hold.
THE MIST I AM the mist, the impalpable mist, Back of the thing you seek. My arms are long, Long as the reach of time and space. Some toil and toil, believing, Looking now and again on my face, Catching a vital, olden glory. But no one passes me, I tangle and snare them all. I am the cause of the Sphinx, The voiceless, baffled, patient Sphinx. I was at the first of things, I will be at the last. I am the primal mist And no man passes me; My long impalpable arms Bar them all.	LAST ANSWERS I WROTE a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. I answered: The whole world was mist once long ago and some day it will all go back to mist, Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers Go running back to dust and mist.
BACK YARD SHINE on, O moon of summer. Shine to the leaves of grass, catalpa and oak, All silver under your rain to-night. An Italian boy is sending songs to you to-night from an accordion. A Polish boy is out with his best girl; they marry next month; to-night they are throwing you kisses. An old man next door is dreaming over a sheen that sits in a cherry tree in his back yard. The clocks say I must go--I stay here sitting on the back porch drinking white thoughts you rain down. Shine on, O moon, Shake out more and more silver changes.	AT A WINDOW GIVE me hunger, O you gods that sit and give The world its orders. Give me hunger, pain and want, Shut me out with shame and failure From your doors of gold and fame, Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger! But leave me a little love, A voice to speak to me in the day end, A hand to touch me in the dark room Breaking the long loneliness. In the dusk of day-shapes Blurring the sunset, One little wandering, western star Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow. Let me go to the window, Watch there the day-shapes of dusk And wait and know the coming Of a little love.

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Credits:

All poetry by Carl Sandberg.
Cat Paw and Cat Eye images adapted from Google Images, search terms "cat paw" and cat eye" respectively.
All other photos Joanne Montanye


~ fortis, ferox, et celer ~