Window by Carl Sandburg

Window

by Carl Sandburg

Night from a railroad car window

Is a great, dark, soft thing

Broken across with slashes of light.

I love to travel by train, especially the few times I had a sleeper on an Amtrak. The food was great, the employees were wonderful, the privacy was such a blessing, and the ability to stretch out on a bed and watch the "great, dark, soft" world blur by was exciting.

So I must admit that my own love of train travel influences my love of this poem. However, there are objective reasons for why the poem is on my blog.

There are just 3 lines/1 sentence. The first line tells us where and when we are. The second line gives us a description of that time and place, and the 3 adjectives and 1 noun in that description are wonderful together. The adjectives surprise when placed together--yes, they all fit, but all 3 in the same breath? But it's true--nighttime, from a safe and comfortable vantage point, is great and dark and soft. Soft might be the most unusual of the adjectives, but when you are inside looking out, nighttime is soft, no matter what the weather is.

I also like the use of the word "thing" in the second line. Again, it's a bit of a surprise calling night a thing. But it is a thing. If Sandburg had just written " . . . is great, dark, and soft" the line/description would end with soft, putting too much emphasis on it.

The third line is a bit of a turn. The words "broken" and "slashes" are both hard; the first because of how it sounds and the second because of what it means. By using these 2 words, Sandburg makes the light--generally thought of as a positive, especially in the night--something that certainly not evil, but is interrupting the comfort we got in the second line.

Sandburg wrote a lot of poems in which windows play a part. He is not alone in this, of course. Windows are great symbols, metaphors, and tropes, but they are also one of the everyday things that can be elevated into something greater in a wonderful poem.