Long ago I learned how to sleep, In an old apple orchard where the wind swept by counting its money and throwing it away, In a wind-gaunt orchard where the limbs forked out and listened or never listened at all, In a passel of trees where the branches trapped the wind into whistling, "Who, who are you?" I slept with my head in an elbow on a summer afternoon and there I took a sleep lesson. There I went away saying: I know why they sleep, I know how they trap the tricky winds. Long ago I learned how to listen to the singing wind and how to forget and how to hear the deep whine, Slapping and lapsing under the day blue and the night stars: Who, who are you? Who can ever forget listening to the wind go by counting its money and throwing it away?
String Quartet
Song Cycle by Frederick Koch (b. 1923)
?. Long ago I learned how to sleep  [sung text not yet checked]
Language: English
Authorship:
- by Carl Sandburg (1878 - 1967), "Wind Song", appears in Smoke and Steel, first published 1920
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Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]Total word count: 148