Kin

Kin - meaning Summary

Distant Kin and Transformation

Sandburg's short lyric imagines an elemental kinship between a subterranean fire and a distant "brother" beneath the sea. The speaker frames geological and temporal distance as intimate potential: a meeting that may take thousands of years when fire will warm, hold, wrap, and use the brother. The poem compresses vast time into personal language, suggesting continuity through transformation and the slow, physical processes that bind beings across epochs.