Aprons of Silence, poetry by Carl August Sandburg

Image Credit: poets.org

Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, writer and editor. He was born in Galesburg, Illinois, to parents of Swedish ancestry. Sandburg won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. He was widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature," especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed "unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life," according to Wikipedia.

Sandburg and his wife Paula, raised three daughters. He is also remembered by generations of children for his Rootabaga Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons, a series of whimsical, sometimes melancholy stories he originally created for his own daughters. The Rootabaga Stories were born of Sandburg's desire for "American fairy tales" to match American childhood. He felt that European stories involving royalty and knights were inappropriate, so he chose to populate his stories with skyscrapers, trains, corn fairies and the "Five Marvelous Pretzels". In 1945 he moved to a 246-acre rural estate in Flat Rock, North Carolina. It is reported that Sandburg produced a little over a third of his total published work. President Lyndon B. Johnson noted that "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America." As we continue to celebrate National Poetry Month, please enjoy this poem by Carl Sandburg, Aprons of Silence.

Aprons Of Silence

By Carl Sandburg

Many things I might have said today. 

And I kept my mouth shut. 

So many times I was asked 

To come and say the same things 

Everybody was saying, no end 

To the yes-yes, yes-yes, 

me-too, me-too.

The aprons of silence covered me. 

A wire and hatch held my tongue. 

I spit nails into an abyss and listened. 

I shut off the gable of Jones, Johnson, Smith, 

All whose names take pages in the city directory.

I fixed up a padded cell and lugged it around. 

I locked myself in and nobody knew it. 

Only the keeper and the kept in the hoosegow 

Knew it--on the streets, in the post office, 

On the cars, into the railroad station 

Where the caller was calling, "All a-board, 

All a-board for . . . Blaa-blaa . . . Blaa-blaa, 

Blaa-blaa . . . and all points northwest . . .all a-board." 

Here I took along my own hoosegow 

And did business with my own thoughts. 

Do you see? It must be the aprons of silence.