Chicago Poems/The Answer

by Carl Sandburg

 

THE ANSWER

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.