Dust
Dust - meaning Summary
Memory Transforms Small Things
The poem presents dust as carrying memory of earlier lives—a rose and a woman that once held each other. Sandburg uses simple, repeating images to blur boundaries between object and person, suggesting cycles of transformation and loss. The final question widens the scope: many present things may retain forgotten identities. It invites readers to consider impermanence, the persistence of memory, and how past forms haunt the ordinary world.
Read Complete AnalysesHere is dust remembers it was a rose one time and lay in a woman's hair. Here is dust remembers it was a woman one time and in her hair lay a rose. Oh things one time dust, what else now is it you dream and remember of old days?
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