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A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Old Woman

Carl Sandburg

The owl-car clatters along, dogged by the echo
From building and battered paving-stone.
The headlight scoffs at the mist,
And fixes its yellow rays in the cold slow rain;
Against a pane I press my forehead
And drowsily look on the walls and sidewalks.

The headlight finds the way
And life is gone from the wet and the welter—
Only an old woman, bloated, disheveled and bleared.
Far-wandered waif of other days,
Huddles for sleep in a doorway,
Homeless.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From Chicago Poems | Henry Holt & Company, 1916
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