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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Carl Sandburg

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Who Am I?

Carl Sandburg

From “Chicago Poems”

MY head knocks against the stars.

My feet are on the hilltops.

My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of universal life.

Down in the sounding foam of primal things I reach my hands and play with pebbles of destiny.

I have been to hell and back many times.

I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.

I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.

I know the passionate seizure of beauty

And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs reading “Keep Off.”

My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive in the universe.