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.


About this poem
"The Answer" was published in Sandburg's book "Chicago Poems" (H. Holt and Company, 1916).

About Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was born in Galesburg, Ill., 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, N.C., in 1967.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


This poem is in the public domain. Distributed by King Features Syndicate