Chicago Poems/The Walking Man of Rodin

by Carl Sandburg

 

THE WALKING MAN OF RODIN

Legs hold a torso away from the earth.
And a regular high poem of legs is here.
Powers of bone and cord raise a belly and lungs
Out of ooze and over the loam where eyes look and ears hear
And arms have a chance to hammer and shoot and run motors.
⁠You make us
⁠Proud of our legs, old man.

And you left off the head here,
The skull found always crumbling neighbor of the ankles.