So....I love Carl Sandburg (second only to T.S. Eliot). I love his love for the "common man" and the grit and grime of the city and humanity. I can definately identify with it (remember...the grandson of a farmer and a farmboy at heart here...lol).

I've read and reread this particular selection over and over again lately. Nothing else quite so succinctly defines how I'm feeling lately:
(I would hilite...but for some reason that isn't working for me right now...d'oh!)


"At a Window" - from Fogs and Fires

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 lonliness.
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.

-Austin