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Number Man

By Carl Sandburg 1878–1967 Carl Sandburg

(for the ghost of Johann Sebastian Bach)

He was born to wonder about numbers.

He balanced fives against tens

and made them sleep together

and love each other.

He took sixes and sevens

and set them wrangling and fighting

over raw bones.

He woke up twos and fours

out of baby sleep

and touched them back to sleep.

He mananged eights and nines,

gave them prophet beards,

marched them into mists and mountains.

He added all the numbers he knew,

multiplied them by new-found numbers

and called it a prayer of Numbers.

For each of a million cipher silences

he dug up a mate number

for a candle light in the dark.

He knew love numbers, luck numbers,

how the sea and the stars

are made and held by numbers.

He died from the wonder of numbering.

He said good-by as if good-by is a number.

Carl Sandburg, “Number Man” from The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg. Copyright © 1970 by Carl Sandburg. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Source: Poetry (October 1947).

Biography

"Trying to write briefly about Carl Sandburg," said a friend of the poet, "is like trying to picture the Grand Canyon in one black and white snapshot." His range of interests was enumerated by his close friend, Harry Golden, who, in his study of the poet, called Sandburg "the one American writer who distinguished himself in five fields—poetry, history, biography, fiction, and music."

Sandburg composed his poetry primarily in . . .

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