morning sky goes blue
sunset sky goes bronze time is
a storyteller

Adapted from The Fireborn are at Home in Fire by Carl Sandburg

Luck is a star.
Money is a plaything.
Time is a storyteller.
The sky goes high, big.
The sky goes wide and blue.
And the fireborn — they go far —
being at home in fire.

Can you compose yourself
The same as a bright bandana,
A bandana folded blue and cool,
Whatever the high howling,
The accents of blam blam?
Can I, can John Smith, John Doe,
Whatever the awful accents,
Whatever the horst wessel hiss,
Whatever books be burnt and crisp,
Whatever hangmen bring their hemp,
Whatever horsemen sweep the sunsets,
Whatever hidden hovering candle
Sways as a wafer of light?

Can you compose yourself
The same as a bright bandana,
A bandana folded blue and cool?
Can I, too, drop deep down
In a pool of cool remembers,
In a float of fine smoke blue,
In a keeping of one pale moon,
Weaving our wrath in a pattern
Woven of wrath gone down,
Crossing our scarlet zigzags
With pools of cool blue,
With floats of smoke blue?

Can you, can I, compose ourselves
In wraps of personal cool blue,
In sheets of personal smoke blue?
Bach did it, Johann Sebastian.
So did the one and only John Milton.
And the old slave Epictetus
And the other slave Spartacus
And Brother Francis of Assisi.
So did General George Washington
On a horse, in a saddle,
On a boat, in heavy snow,
In a loose cape overcoat
And snow on his shoulders.
So did John Adams, Jackson, Jefferson.
So did Lincoln on a cavalry horse
At the Chancellorsville review
With platoons right, platoons left,
In a wind nearly blowing the words away
Asking the next man on a horse:
“What’s going to become of all these
boys when the war is over?”

The shape of your shadow
Comes from you — and you only?
Your personal fixed decision
Out of you — and your mouth only?
Your No, your Yes, your own?

Bronze old timers belong here.
Yes, they might be saying:
Shade the flame
Back to final points
Of all sun and fog
In the moving frame
Of your personal eyes.
Then stand to the points.
Let hunger and hell come.
Or ashes and shame poured
On your personal head.
Let death shake its bones.
The teaching goes back far:
Compose yourself.

Luck is a star.
Money is a plaything.
Time is a storyteller.
And the sky goes blue with mornings.
And the sky goes bronze with sunsets.
And the fireborn — they go far —
being at home in fire.