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Beauty, Mortality, and Mist
Sandburg recounts being asked the meaning of a poem about mist. He first describes the mist’s simple beauty transforming a drab scene into mysterious light. Then he gives a blunt, philosophical answer: everything began as mist and will return to it. Emphasizing human physicality and impermanence, he says poets are drawn to dust and mist because final explanations reduce life to elemental, dissolving matter.
Read Complete AnalysesI wrote a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. I answered: The whole world was mist once long ago and some day it will all go back to mist, Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers Go running back to dust and mist.
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