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Last Answers

by Carl Sandburg, 1916

I wrote a poem on the mist
 And a woman asked me what I meant by it.
 I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
 And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color.

   I answered:
 The whole world was mist once long ago and some day it will all go back to mist,
 Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue
 And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers
 Go running back to dust and mist.

Published in Chicago Poems
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Any corrections or public domain poems I should have here? Email me at poems (at) this domain.