The Windy City 7
Carl Sandburg
At the white clock-tower
lighted in night purples
over the boulevard link bridge
only the blind get by without acknowledgments.
The passers-by, factory punch-clock numbers,
hotel girls out for the air, teameoes,
coal passers, taxi drivers, window washers,
paperhangers, floorwalkers, bill collectors,
burglar alarm salesmen, massage students,
manicure girls, chiropodists, bath rubbers,
booze runners, hat cleaners, armhole basters,
delicatessen clerks, shovel stiffs, work plugs —
They all pass over the bridge, they all look up
at the white clock-tower
lighted in night purples
over the boulevard link bridge —
And sometimes one says, "Well, we hand it to 'em."
Mention proud things, catalogue them.
The jack-knife bridge opening, the ore boats,
the wheat barges passing through.
Three overland trains arriving the same hour,
one from Memphis and the cotton belt,
one from Omaha and the corn belt,
one from Duluth, the lumberjack and the iron range.
Mention a carload of shorthorns taken off the valleys of Wyoming last week, arriving yesterday, knocked in the head, stripped, quartered, hung in ice boxes today, mention the daily melodrama of this humdrum, rhythms of heads, hides, heels, hoofs hung up.
The Wrigley Building, with its iconic clock tower, was built in 1920.
Poetry Atlas has many poems about Chicago.
This poem appeared in the collection, Slabs of the Sunburnt West.
