Sandburg, Carl. "Dust".

Summary

The poem opens with an image of dust which was once a rose in a woman's hair. The image is further developed in that the dust was once a woman with a rose in her hair. The conclusion broadens to include anything which once existed and now is turned to dust.

Analysis

- a brief condensed poem

- free verse, enjambments

- repetitions

- simple, non-figurative language

- resembles Sandburg's poem "Last Answers": in both poems "dust" is the last answer

- a simple yet profound and universal metaphysical idea: the world's beginning was dust and its end will be dust, too