Honey and Salt

Title Page

Table of Contents

Copyright

Honey and Salt

Pass, Friend

Alone and Not Alone

Wingtip

Love Is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely

Almanac

Biography

Anecdote of Hemlock for Two Athenians

Dreaming Fool

Lief the Lucky

Bird Footprint

Cahokia

Buyers and Sellers

City Number

Chromo

The Evening Sunsets Witness and Pass On

Deep Sea Wandering

Call the Next Witness

Early Copper

Atlas, How Have You Been?

Cheap Rent

Elm Buds

Child Face

Fog Numbers

Evening Questions

Fifty-Fifty

Evening Sea Wind

Forgotten Wars

God Is No Gentleman

Hunger and Cold

Foxgloves

Harvest

Fame If Not Fortune

Impasse

Is Wisdom a Lot of Language?

Keepsake Boxes

Impossible Iambics

Lackawanna Twilight

If So Hap May Be

Kisses, Can You Come Back Like Ghosts?

Lake Michigan Morning

New Weather

Lesson

Metamorphosis

Love Beyond Keeping

Moods

Moon Rondeau

Little Word, Little White Bird

Offering and Rebuff

Morning Glory Blue

High Moments

Mummy

Old Hokusai Print

One Parting

Ever a Seeker

Old Music for Quiet Hearts

Personalia

The Gong of Time

Prairie Woodland

Shadows Fall Blue on the Mountains

Quotations

Skyscrapers Stand Proud

Pool of Bethesda

First Sonata for Karlen Paula

Thou Art Like a Flower

Solo for Saturday Night Guitar

Rose Bawn

Speech

Runaway Colors

Out of the Rainbow End

Sun Dancer

Themes in Contrast

Two Fish

Smoke Shapes

Three Shrines

Variations on a Theme

Timesweep

About the Author

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
v1.0215

A bag of tricks—is it?

      And a game smoothies play?

If you're good with a deck of cards

or rolling the bones—that helps?

If you can tell jokes and be a chum

and make an impression—that 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 it's a summer tan and a winter windburn

and it comes as weather comes and you can't 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 it—you 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 three—along 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 isn't 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.

 

Bidden or unbidden? how comes love?

Both bidden and unbidden, a sneak and a shadow,

a dawn in a doorway throwing a dazzle

or a sash of light in a blue fog,

a slow blinking of two red lanterns in river mist

or a deep smoke winding one hump of a mountain

and the smoke becomes a smoke known to your own

twisted individual garments:

the winding of it gets into your walk, your hands,

your face and eyes.

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 birds—are 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