A Song of Myself

Summary

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The Memory Palace – "A Song of Myself"

Host: Nate DiMeo
Release Date: August 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

This special episode of The Memory Palace features host Nate DiMeo revisiting his celebrated 2016 reading of Walt Whitman’s “A Song of Myself.” Prompted by a wave of listener requests for the missing episode, DiMeo reintroduces the reading, complete with its original bittersweet introduction recorded on the eve of the 2016 US election. The episode explores themes of selfhood, democracy, mortality, the body and soul, connection, and the universality of human experience.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Host’s Introduction and Context

[00:49–03:15]

• Listener Requests: Nate acknowledges listener emails asking for the return of this reading.
• Personal Context: Describes his altered summer schedule due to sickness and travel.
• 2016 Context: The original recording occurred in a Phoenix, AZ motel room the night before Election Day—full of anticipation and anxiety for the country’s future.

"I do not have a normal episode for you today. There will be one soon. But for now, here is a complete reading of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. Because that's what I feel like doing."
— Nate DiMeo [03:15]

2. Whitman’s “A Song of Myself” – Major Themes and Spirited Passages

Self-Acceptance and Identity

[03:25–15:00]

• The celebration and acceptance of the self, flaws, contradictions, and all.
• The shared nature of being human: “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
• Calls for direct experience over secondhand knowledge.

"I am large, I contain multitudes."
— Walt Whitman (read by Nate DiMeo) [approx. 73:03]

Sensory Experience and Unity with Nature

[15:00–20:00]

• Vivid descriptions of sensations, nature, the body, and breathing the same air.
• Emphasis on equality: grass as a universal symbol, “growing among black folks as among White... I give them the same, I receive the same...”

"A child said, what is the grass? Fetching it to me with full hands. How can I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he..."
— Walt Whitman [approx. 19:30]

Mortality and Life’s Continuum

[20:00–30:00]

• Rejects the finality of death, instead positing continuous life and rebirth.
• Key idea: "All goes onward and outward. Nothing collapses."
• Emphasizes the equality of all experiences—birth, death, sorrow, and joy.

"I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it."
— Walt Whitman [approx. 22:40]

Human Connections and Inclusivity

[30:00–40:00]

• Stories and vignettes from American life, offering compassion to everyone—the runaway slave, the laborer, the president, the prostitute, the oppressed.
• Radical inclusivity: no one is turned away from the “meal equally set.”

"By God I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart to the same terms."
— Walt Whitman [approx. 40:00]

Democracy, Brotherhood, and Empathy

[40:00–55:00]

• Whitman’s “sign of democracy” and sharing of self as a political gesture.
• Embracing contradiction and plurality.
• The notion that suffering and triumph are shared, that every experience is part of a collective story.

"Whoever degrades another, degrades me."
— Walt Whitman [approx. 40:30]

Discovery, Questioning, and Ongoing Journey

[55:00–65:00]

• Affirms continuous self-discovery: “It is time to explain myself. Let us stand up.”
• Celebrates the ongoing journey of life, knowledge, and spiritual seeking.
• Reframes life and existence as a never-ending process rather than a finished state.

"Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself."
— Walt Whitman [approx. 64:00]

Transcendence and Legacy

[65:00–End (~75:00)]

• On death: Whitman bequeaths himself “to the dirt to grow from the grass I love.”
• His voice continues in the world, “waiting for you,” emphasizing continuity beyond physical existence.

"Missing me one place, search another, I stop somewhere, waiting for you."
— Walt Whitman [approx. 74:40]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."
  [73:03]
  — Walt Whitman (read by Nate DiMeo)
• "You shall no longer take things at second or third hand...You shall listen to all sides and filter them for yourself."
  [approx. 08:50]
• "I believe in you, my soul. The other I am must not abase itself to you, and you must not be abased to the other..."
  [approx. 13:00]
• "The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, and if ever there was, it led forward life..."
  [22:10]
• "Whoever degrades another, degrades me. And whatever is done or said returns at last to me."
  [40:30]
• "I am the poet of the body, and I am the poet of the soul."
  [52:30]
• "Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself."
  [64:00]
• "Missing me one place, search another, I stop somewhere, waiting for you."
  [74:40]

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Structure & Flow

• [00:00–03:15] – Host’s contemporary intro (and meta-commentary about listener requests and episode availability)
• [03:15–~74:55] – Original 2016 introduction, emotional context, then a full reading of “A Song of Myself”
• [Throughout] – Intimate tone, introspective and open, as fitting both DiMeo’s narration style and Whitman’s text.
• [No sign-offs or ads in main content]

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Timeless Comfort: This reading—requested by longtime listeners—serves as a touchstone of self-affirmation, compassion, and hope, especially meaningful in uncertain times.
• Democratic Spirit: Whitman’s words, brought to life by DiMeo, evoke a radical empathy and democratic inclusivity, reminding us that all people and experiences matter, equally.
• Personal and Universal: The poem’s message remains that the journey to know oneself is intertwined with the fate and story of everyone else—a song of both the deeply personal and the universally human.

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Whether you’re revisiting this episode for comfort or encountering it anew, DiMeo’s reading provides a powerful space for reflection—echoing Whitman’s invitation to celebrate ourselves, challenge ourselves, and embrace the ongoing mystery of being alive.

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Transcript

[A]

This episode of the Memory palace is brought to you by Function Health August is National Wellness Month, but for most health trends, they just turn out to be just that. They are trends. They're flashes in the pan that just wind up with people buying random gadgets. Guessing it what actually makes a difference in one's health. But Function Health is a way to cut down on the guesswork. It tracks markers behind your energy and immunity and overall health. It doesn't give you just a generic overview. They look at your core biomarkers, your white blood cell counts, your hscrp, which I did not know anything about but now I know. Catches hidden energy draining inflammation, your vitamin D and zinc, your ferritin, your cortisol levels, checking out how stress is actually impacting your body. I mean, as we age and as our lives change, our bodies change.

[B]

And if you have function along with

[A]

you, not only can you catch problems when they occur and then take them to your doctor, you can keep track of your baseline, your ebbs and your flows that will help you and the people who care about you keep you healthy. Own your own health and start by understanding what's happening beneath the surface. Function provides 160 plus lab tests for a dollar a day. Remember pricing on advanced imaging. [e-mail] memory and use code MEMORY25 for a $25 credit. Hello everybody. I hope you are making it through this sweltering summer okay and safely. And if you are south of the equator, I hope your winter is going well. I've decided to switch things up slightly with my summer schedule. I usually step away from new episodes in August, but I kind of shifted things up a little bit because I have shifted travel schedule and have this weird lingering summer cold slash sore throat thing. And so I'm switching it up. New episodes will start on the second Thursday in August and then run through the fall until a little December mid December break as usual. But here's something for the feed. In the last couple of months I've gotten a surprising number of emails from listeners telling me that they're apparently beloved copy of a reading I did on the eve of the 2016 election 10 long, long years ago of Walt Whitman's A Song of Myself had gone missing from their feeds and they were like desperately looking for it. And I think in each case this was specific to these listeners and their particular platforms. But the trend was trendy enough that it seemed worth it to put it back into the feed so that folks who return to it again and again. Apparently there's a weird amount of you, which is lovely. I mean weird in the nicest way. You know, you'll have it right there at the top of your feed to give you the opportunity to download it and save it. And it will give folks who weren't listening to the show back then, before the world took its strange turn a chance to check it out, including its original introduction, which is such a strange time capsule. New episode in a couple weeks.

[B]

This is the Memory palace, sort of. I'm Nate DiMeo. So it is November 3rd, and I am in a motel in Phoenix, Arizona. CNN is muted on the TV. Tomorrow on the 4th, I will be driving voters to the polls. And it is certainly not November 3, 2016. As you listen to this, it may well be after election Day. And so you know what's going to happen. And I kind of envy you, I think, at least in being past this exhausting and demoralizing election and with all the clattering noise of the past months, I do not have a normal episode for you today. There will be one soon. But for now, here is a complete reading of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. Because that's what I feel like doing. Tonight. I celebrate myself and sing myself in what I assume you shall assume. For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loaf and invite my soul. I lean and loaf at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass, my tongue, every atom of my blood formed from this soil, this air, born here of parents born here from parents the same and their parents the same. I, now 37 years old, in perfect health, begin, hoping to cease not till death creeds and schools in abeyance, retiring back awhile sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, nature without check, with original energy. Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelf are crowded with perfumes. I breathe the fragrance myself, and I know it and like it. The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. The atmosphere is not a perfume. It has no taste of the distillation. It is odorless. It is for my mouth forever. I am in love with it. I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked. I am mad for it to be in contact with me, the smoke of my own breath, echoes, ripples, buzz in whispers, love, root, silk thread, crotch in vine, my respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, the sniff of green leaves and dry Leaves and of the shore, of the dark colored sea, Rocks of hay in the barn. The sound of the belched words, of my voice loose to the eddies of the wind. A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, the play of shine and shade in the trees as the supple boughs wag the delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hillsides, the feeling of health, the full noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun. Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned the earth much? Have you practiced so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems. You shall possess the good of the earth and the sun. There are millions of suns left. You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books. You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me. You shall listen to all sides and filter them for yourself. I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end. But I do not talk of the beginning or the end. There was never any more inception than there is now, nor any more youth or age than there is now. And will never be any more perfection than there is now, nor any more heaven or hell than there is now. Urge and urge and urge. Always the procreant urge of the world. Out of the dimness opposite equals advance always substance and increase, always sex, always a knit of identity, always distinction always a breed of life. To elaborate is no avail. To elaborate is no availability, learned and unlearned Feel that it is so sure as the most certain sure plumb in the uprights, well entreatied, braced in the beams, stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I. In this mystery here we stand. Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul. Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen. Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn, showing the best and dividing it from the worst. Age vexes age, knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things. While they discuss, I am silent and go bathe and admire myself welcome in every organ and attribute. Of me and of any man hardy and clean, not an inch, nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest. I am satisfied I see, dance, laugh, sing as the hugging and loving bedfellow sleeps in my side through the night and withdraws at the peep of day with stealthy tread, leaving me baskets covered with white towels, swelling the house with their plenty. Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes that they turn from gazing after and down the road and forthwith cipher and chose me to assent exactly the value of 1 and exactly the value of 2, and which is ahead? Trippers and askers surround me, people I meet, the effect upon me of my early life, or the ward and city I live in, or the nation, the latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors, old and new. My dinner dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues, the real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love. The sickness of one of my folks or myself, or ill doing or loss or lack of money or depressions or exaltations battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events, these come to me days and nights and go for me again. But they are not the me myself, apart from the pulling and hauling, stands what I am, stands amused, complacent, compassionate, idle and unitary, looks down, is erect or bends an arm on an ill palpable certain rest, Looking from side curved head curious what will come next, Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders. I have no mockings or arguments. I witness and wait. I believe in you, my soul. The other I am must not abase itself to you, and you must not be abased to the other loaf with me on the grass loose the stop from your throat, not words, not music or rhyme. I want not custom or lecture, not even the best, only the lull. I like the hum of your valved voice. I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, how you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over me and parted the shirt of my bosom bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare stripped heart and reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet, Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the arguments of the earth. And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own and I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, and that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers and that a kelson of the creation is love and limitless are leaves stip or drooping in the fields, and brown ants in the little wells beneath them, and mossy scabs at the worm fence, heaped stones, elder mulein and pokeweed. A child said, what is the grass? Fetching it to me with full hands. How can I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, or out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, a scented gift and remembrancer, designedly dropped bearing the owner's name someway in the corners that we may see and remark and say whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, and it means sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, growing among black folks as among White Canuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman Cuff. I give them the same, I receive the same, and now it seems to me, the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you, curling grass. It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men. It may be if I had known them, I would have loved them. It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers laps. And here you are the mother's laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, darker than the colorless beards of old men, dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. Oh, I perceive, after all so many uttering tongues. And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women and the hints about old men and mothers and the offspring taken too soon out of their laps. What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere. The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, and if ever there was, it led forward life and does not wait to the end to attest it and cease the moment life appeared. All goes onward and outward. Nothing collapses. And to die is different from what anyone supposed luckier as anyone supposed it lucky to be born. I hastened to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. I pass death with the dying and birth with the new washed babe, and I am not contained between my hat and boots and peruse manifold objects, no two alike, and every one good, the earth good, and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good. I am not earth, nor an adjunct of an earth. I am the mate and companion of people all just as immortal and fathomless as myself. They do not know how immortal, but I know every kind for itself in its own for me mine, male and female, for me those that have been boys and that love women for me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted. For me the sweetheart and the old maid. For me mothers and the mothers of mothers. For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears. For me children and the begetters of children undrape. You are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded. I see through the broadcloth and gingham weather and know and am tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away. The little one sleeps in its cradle. I lift the gauze and look a long time and silently brush away flies with my hand. The youngster and the red faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill, appearingly view them from the top. The suicide sprawls in the bloody floor of the bedroom. I witness the corpse with its stabbed hair and note where the pistol has fallen, the blab of the pave, tires of carts, slough of boot soles, talk of the promenaders, the heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the clank of the shod horses on the granite floor, the snow sleighs clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snowballs, the hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of roused mobs, the flap of the curtained litter, a sick man inside borne to the hospital, the meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall, the excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his passage to the center of the crowd, the impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes. What groans of overfed or half starved who fall silen sunstruck in fits, what exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and give birth to babes, what living and buried speech is always vibrating here? What howls restrained by decorum, arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made acceptances, rejections with convex lips. I mind them o' er the show, a resonance of them. I come and I depart. The big doors in the country barns stand open and ready, the dried grass in the harvest time loads, the slow drawn wagon. The clear light plays in the brown, gray and green inter tinged the armfuls are packed to the sagging mo. I am there, I help. I came stretched atop the load I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined in the other. I Jump from the cross beams and seized the clover in timothy and roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps. Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt, wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee. In the late afternoon, choosing a safe spot to pass the night, kindling a fire and broiling the fresh killed game. Falling asleep on the gathered leaves with my dog and gun by my side. The Yankee clipper is under her skysails. She cuts the sparkle and scud. My eyes settle the land. I bend at her prow and shout joyously from the deck. The boatmen and clam diggers rose early and stopped for me. I tucked my trouser ends in my boots and went and had a good time. You should have been with us that day around the chowder kettle. I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west. The bride was a red girl. Her father and his friends sat near, cross legged and dumbly smoking. They had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders. On a bank lounged the trapper. He was dressed mostly in skins. His luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck. He held his bride by the hand. She had long eyelashes. Her head was bare. Her coarse straight locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reached to her feet. The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside. I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile. Through the swung half door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and weak and went where he sat on a log and let him in and assured him and brought water and filled a tub for his sweated body and bruised feet. And gave him a room that entered from my own and gave him some coarse clean clothes and remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness. And remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck and his ankles. He stayed with me a week before he recuperated and passed north. I had him sit next to me at my table, my firelock leaned in the corner. 28 young men bathe by the shore. 28 young men, and all so friendly. 28 years of womanly life and all so lonesome. She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank. She hides, handsome and richly dressed, aft the blinds of the window. Which of the young men does she like the best? The homeliest of them is beautiful to her. Where are you off to, lady? For I see you. You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room, dancing and laughing. Along the beach came the 29th bather. The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them. The beards of the young men glistened with wet. It ran from their long hair. Little streams passed all over their bodies. An unseen hand also passed over their bodies. It descended tremblingly from the temples and ribs. The young men flowed on their backs. Their white bellies bulge to the sun. They do not ask who seizes fast to them. They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending arch. They do not think whom they souse with spray. The butcher boy puts off his killing clothes or sharpens his knife at the stall in the market I'd loiter enjoying his repartee in his shuffle and breakdown. Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil. Each has his main sledge. They are all out. There is a great heat in the fire from the cinder strewed threshold. I follow their movements. The lithe sheer of their waists play even with their massive arms overhand the hammers swing over hand so slow over hand so sure they do not hasten. Each man hits in his place. The Negro holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags underneath of its tied over chain. The Negro that drives the long day at the stone yard. Steady and tall. He stands poised on one leg on the string piece. His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breasts and loosens over his hip band. His glance is calm and commanding. He tosses the slouch of his hat away from his forehead. The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache falls in the black of his polished and perfect limbs. I behold the picturesque giant and love him. Now I do not stop there. I go with the team also. I am the caresser of life wherever moving backward as well as forward, Slewing to niches aside and junior bending not a person or object missing, absorbing all to myself. And for this song oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade. What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life. My tread scares the wood drake and wood duck on my distant and day long ramble. They rise together. They slowly circle around. I believe in those winged purposes and acknowledge red, white, yellow playing within me and consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional. Do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else. And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut. It trills pretty well to me. And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me. The wild gander leads his flock through the cool night. Yahonk, he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation. The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listen in close, find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky, the sharp hoof moose of the north, the cat on the house sill, the chickadee, the prairie dog, the litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats, the brood of the turkey hen and she with her half spread wings. I see in them and myself the same old law. The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections they scorn the best I can do to relate them. I am enamored of growing outdoors, of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods, of the builders and steerers, of ships and the wielders of axes and mauls and the drivers of horses. I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out. What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest is me, me going in for my chances, spending the vast returns adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me, not asking the sky to come down to my goodwill, scattering it freely forever. The pure contralto sings in the organ loft. The carpenter dresses his plank. The tongue of his foreplane whistles in the wildly ascending lisp. The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner. The pilot seizes the kingpin. He heaves down with a strong arm. The mate stands braced in the whaleboat. Lance and harpoon are ready. The duck shooter walks by, silent and cautious stretches. The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar. The spinning girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel. The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on his first day loaf and looks at the oats to the rye. The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum, a confirmed case. He will never sleep anymore as he did in the cot in his mother's bedroom. The jaour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case. He turns his quid of tobacco while his eyes blur with the manuscript. The malformed limbs are tied to the surgeon's table. What is removed drops horribly in the pail. The quadroon girl is sold at the auction stand. The drunkard nods by the bar room stove. The machinist rolls up his sleeves. The policeman travels his beat. The gatekeeper marks who pass. The young fellow drives the express wagon. I love him though I do not know him. The half breed straps on his light boots to complete in the race. The western turkey shooting draws old and young. Some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs out from the crowd steps. The marksman takes his position, levels his piece. The groups of newly come immigrants cover the wharf or levee as the woolly pates hoe in the sugar field. The overseer views them from his saddle. The bugle calls from the ballroom. The gentlemen run for their partners and dancers bow to each other. The young lies awake in the cedar roof garret and harks to the musical rain. The wolverine sets traps in the creek that helps fill the Huron. The squaw wrapped in her yellow hemmed cloth is offering moccasins and bead bags for sale. The connoisseur peers along the exhibition gallery with half shut eyes bent sideways as the deckhand makes fast the steamboat. The plank is thrown of the shore going passengers. The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a ball and stops now and then for the knots. The one year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago born her first child. The clean haired Yankee girl who works with the sewing machine or in the factory or mill. The paving man leans in his two handed hammer. The reporter's lead flies wildly across the notebook. The sign painter is lettering with blue and gold. The canal boy trots in the tow path. The bookkeeper counts at his desk. The shoemaker wack as his thread. The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him. The child is baptized. The convert is making his first professions. The regatta is spread out in the bay. The race has begun. How the white sails sparkle. The drover watching his drove sings out to them that would stray. The peddler sweats with his pack on his back. The purchaser haggling the odd scent. The bride unrumbles her white dress. The minute hand of the clock moves slowly. The opium eater reclines with a rigid head and just open. The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs and her tipsy and pimpled neck. The crowd laugh at the background oaths. The men jeer and wink to each other miserable. I do not laugh at your oaths nor jeer you. The president holding a cabinet council is surrounded by the grand secretaries. On the piazza walk three matrons stately and friendly with twined arms. The crew of the fish smack pack repeated layers of halibut in the hold. The Missourian crosses the plains toting his wares and his cattle. As the fare collector goes through the train he gives notice by the jingling of loose change. The floor men are laying the floor. The tinners are tinning the roof. The masons are calling for mortar in single file, each shouldering his hod pass Onward. The laborers seasons pursuing each other. And the indescribable crowds is gathered. It is the fourth of the seven month. What salutes of cannon and small arms seasons pursuing each other. The plougher ploughs, the mower mows and the winter grain falls in the ground. Off in the lakes the pike fisher watches and waits by the hole. In the frozen surface the stumps stand thick round the clearing. The squatter strikes deep with his axe. Flatboatmen make fast towards dusk near the cottonwood or pecan trees. Coon seekers go through the regions of the Red river or through those drained by the Tennessee or through those of the Arkansas. Torches shine in the dark that hangs in the Chattahoochee or the Altamaha. Patriarchs sit at supper with sons and grandsons and great grandsons. Around them in walls of adobe and canvas tents rest hunters and trappers after their day's sport. The city sleeps and the country sleeps. The living sleep for their time. The dead sleep for their time. The old husband sleeps by his wife and the young husband sleeps by his wife. And these tend inward to me and I tend outward to them. And such as it is to be, of these more or less I am, and of these one and all I weave the song of myself I am of old and young, of the foolish as much of the wise, regardless of others, Ever regardful of others, maternal as well as paternal. A child as well as a man Stuffed with the stuff that is coarse and stuffed with the stuff that is fine. One of the nation of many nations, the smallest the same and the largest the same. A Southerner soon as a Northerner, A planter, nonchalant and hospitable. Down by the Oconee I live A Yankee, bound by my own way, ready for trade. My joints, the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth. A Kentuckian walking the vale of the Elkhorn in my dear skin. A Louisianian, A Georgian, A boatman over lakes or bays or across coasts. A Hoosier badger, buckeye at home on Canadian snowshoes or up in the bush or with fishermen off Newfoundland. At home in the fleet of ice boats sailing with the rest and tacking at home in the hills of Vermont or in the woods of Maine or the Texas ranch. Comrade of Californians, comrade of free Northwesterners loving their big proportions. Comrade of Raftsmen and coalmen, comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meet A learner with the simplest, a teacher with the thoughtfulest, a novice, beginner, yet experience of myriads of seasons, of every hue and caste am I. Of every rank in religion, of farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman sailor, Quaker, prisoner, fancy man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest. I resist anything better than my own diversity. Breathe the air, but leave plenty after me and am not stuck up and am in my place. The moth and the fish eggs are in their place. The bright suns I see and the dark suns I cannot see are in their place. The palpable is in its place, and the impalpable is in its place. These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands. They are not original with me. If they are not yours as much as mine, they are nothing or next to nothing. If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle, they are nothing. If they are not just as close as they are distant, they are nothing. This is the grass that grows whenever the land is and the water is. This is the common air that bathes the globe with music. Strong I come with my cornets and my drums. I play not marches for accepted victors only. I play marchers for a conquered and slain person. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall. Battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. I beat and pound for the dead. I blow through my embouchures the loudest and gayest of them vivas to those who have failed, and to those who war vessels sank in the sea, and to those themselves who sank in the sea. And to all the generals and the lost engagements and the all overcome heroes and the numberless unknown heroes, equal to the greatest heroes known. This is the meal equally set. This is the meat for natural hunger. It is for the wicked, just as the same as the righteous. I make appointments with all. I will not have a single person slighted or left away. The kept woman, sponger, thief are hereby invited. The heavy lipped slave is invited. The venerlee is invited. There shall be no difference between them and the rest. This is the press of a bashful hand. This is the float and odor of hair. This is the touch of my lips to yours. This is the murmur of yearning. This is the far off depth in height reflecting my own face. This is the thoughtful merge of myself in the outlet again. Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well, I have for the fourth month Showers have, and Micah on the side of a rock has. Do you take it? I would astonish. Does the daylight astonish? Does the early red start twittering through the woods? Do I astonish more than they this hour? I tell things in confidence. I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you. Who goes there? Hankering, Gross, mystical, nude. How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat? What is a man anyhow? What am I? What are you? All I mark as my own you shall offset with your own, else it were time lost. Listening to me, I do not snivel that snivel the world over, that months are vacuums in the ground, but wallow in filth, whimpering and truckling folds with powders for invalids. Conformity goes to the fourth removed. I wear my hat as I please, indoors or out. And why should I pray? Why should I venerate and be ceremonious? Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counselled with doctors and calculated close, I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones. In all people I see myself none more and not one of barleycorn less. In the good or bad, I say of myself, I say of them, I know I am solid and sound. To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow. All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. I know I am deathless. I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's compass. I know I shall not pass like a child's carlicue cut with a burnt stick at night. I know I am august. I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood. I see that the elementary laws never apologize. I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by. After all, I exist as I am, and that is enough. If no other in the world be aware, I sit content. And if each and all be aware, I sit content. One world is aware, and by far the largest to me, and that is myself. And whether I come to my own Today or in 10,000 or 10 million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait. My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite. I laugh at what you call disillusion, and I know the amplitude of time. I am the poet of the body, and I am the poet of the soul. The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me. The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue. I am the Poet of the woman the same as the man. And I say it is great to be the woman as to be a man. And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. I chant the chant of dilation or pride. We have had ducking and deprecating about enough. I show that size is only development. Have you outstripped the rest? Are you the president? It is a trifle. They will more than arrive there, every one, and still pass on. I am he that walks with the tender and growing night. I call to the earth and the sea half head by the night press close, bare bosom night press close, magnetic nourishing night. Night of south winds, Night of the large few stars still nodding night, mad naked summer night. Smile, O voluptuous cool breathed earth. Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees. Earth of the departed sunset. Earth of the mountains misty topped Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue. Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river. Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake. Far swooping elbowed earth, rich apple blossomed earth. Smile for your lover comes prodigal. You have given me love, therefore I give you love. O unspeakable, passionate love. You see, I resign myself to you also. I guess what you mean. I behold from the beach your crooked inviting fingers. I believe you refuse to go back without feeling of me. We must have a turn together. I undress, hurry me out of the sight of the land. Cushion me soft, rock me in billowy drowse, Dash me with amorous wet. I can repay you. Sea of stretched ground swells Sea breathing broad and convulsive breaths. Sea of the brine of life, of unshevlled yet always ready graves, Howler and scooper of storms, Capricious and dainty sea. I am integral with you. I too am of one phase and all phases. Partaker of influx and efflux. I extoller of hate and conciliation, extoller of ammies and those that sleep in each other's arms. I am he attesting sympathy. Shall I make my list of things in the house and skip the house that supports them? I am not the poet of goodness only. I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also. What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me. I stand indifferent. My gate is no fault, finders or rejecter's gate. I moisten the roots of all that has grown. Did you ever fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy? Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked over and rectified? I find one side of a balance and the antipodal side of a balance. Soft doctrine is steady help, as stable doctrine. Thoughts and deeds of the present arouse an early start this minute that comes to me over the past decillions. There is no better than it. And now what behaved well in the past or behaves well today is not such a wonder. The wonder is always and always how there can be the mean man or an infidel. Endless unfolding of words, of ages, in mine a world of the modern, the word en masse, a word of the faith that never balks. Hence and henceforward it is always the same to me. I accept time absolutely. It alone is without flaw. It alone rounds and completes all that mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. I accept reality and dare not question it. Materialism first and last imbuing. Hurrah for the positive science long lived. Exact demonstration. Fetch stone crop mixed with cedar and branches of lilac. This is the lexicographer. This is the chemistry. This made a grammar of the old cartouches. These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas. This is the geologist that works with the scalpel. And this is the mathematician. Gentlemen, to you the first honors. Always your facts are useful and yet they are not my dwelling. But I enter by them to an area of my dwelling. Less the reminders of properties told my words, and more the reminders that they have life untold and have freedom of extrication, and make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipped and beat the gong of revolt and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire. Walt Whitman A cosmos, a Manhattan, the sun, turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding. No sentimentalist, no stander above men or women, or apart from them, no more modest than immodest. Unscrew the locks from the doors. Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs. Whoever degrades another, degrades me. And whatever is done or said returns at last to me. Through me the afflate is surging and surging through me the current and index. I speak the password primeval, I give the sign of democracy. By God I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart to the same terms. By God I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart. Vaughn. The same terms through me many long dumb voices, voices of the interminable generation of prisoners and slaves, Voices of the diseased and despairing and of thieves and dwarves. Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, and of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father stuff and of the rights of them the others are down upon. Of the deformed, trivial, flat, foolish, despised fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung through me, Forbidden voices. Voices of sexes and lusts. Voices veiled, and I remove the veil. Voices indecent by me, clarified and transfigured. I do not press my finger across my mouth. I keep as delicate around the bowels as round the head and the heart. Copulation is no more rank to me than death is. I believe in the flesh and the appetites. Seeing, hearing, feeling are miracles. And each part and tag of me is a miracle divine am I inside and out. And I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from the scent of these armpits. Aroma finer than prayer, this head more than churches, bibles and all the creeds. If I worship one thing more than another, it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it. Translucent mould of me. It shall be you shaded ledges and rests. It shall be you firm masculine coulter. It shall be you whatever goes through the tilth of me, it shall be you, you my rich blood, your milky steam, pale strippings of my life breast that presses against other breasts. It shall be you, my brain. It shall be your occult convolutions, root of washed sweet flag, timorous pond snipe, nest of guarded duplicate eggs. It shall be you mixed tussle hay of head, beard, brawn. It shall be you trickling SAP of maple fibre of manly wheat. It shall be you sun so generous. It shall be you vapors lighting and shading my face. It shall be you, you sweaty brooks and dews. It shall be you winds whose soft tickling genitals rub at me. It shall be you broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths. It shall be you hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched. It shall be you I dote on myself. There is a lot of me, and also so luscious. Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy. I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish, nor the cause of the friendship I omit, nor the cause of the friendship I take. Again that I walk up my stoop I pause to consider if it really be a morning Glory at my window satisfies me more Than the metaphysics of books to behold the daybreak. The little light fades the immense in diaphanous shadows. The air tastes good to my palate. Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols, silently rising, freshly exuding, Scooting obliquely high and low. Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs Sees a bright juice suffuse heaven. The earth by the sky stayed with the daily close of their injunction, the heavd challenge from the east, that moment over my head the mocking taunt. See then whether you shall be master, Dazzling and tremendous. How quick the sunrise would kill me if I could not now and always send sunrise out of me. We also ascend, Dazzling and tremendous as the sun we found our own. Oh, my soul. In the calm and the cool of daybreak, My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach With a twirl of my tongue. I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds. Speech is the twin of my vision. It is unequal to measure itself, it provokes me forever. It says sarcastically, walt, you contain enough. Why don't you let it out then? Come now. I will not be tantalized. You conceive too much of articulation. Do you not know, O speech, how the buds beneath you are folded, Wading in the gloom, protected by frost, the dirt receding before my prophetical screams, I underlying causes to balance them at last my knowledge, my live parts it keeps tally with the meaning of all things. Happiness which whoever hears me, let him or her set out in search of this day. My final merit. I refuse you. I refuse putting for me what I really am. Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me. I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. Writing and talk do not prove me. I carry the plenum of proof in everything else. In my face, with the hush of my lips, I wholly confound the skeptic. Now I will do nothing but listen, to accrue what I hear into the song, to let sounds contribute toward it. I hear bravuros of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals. I hear the sound, I love the sound of the human voice. I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following. Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, Sounds of the day and night, Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work people at their meals, the angry bass of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick. The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death sentence, the heave yo of stevedores, unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor lifters, the ring of alarm bells, the cry of fire, the whir of swift streaking engines, the hose carts with premonitory tinkles and colored lights, the steam whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars, the slow march played at the head of the association. Marching two and two they go to guard some corpse. The flag tops are draped with black muslin. I hear the violoncello. Tis the young man's heart's complaint. I hear the keyed coronet. It glides quickly in through my ears. It shakes mad sweet pangs through my belly and breast. I hear the chorus. It is a grand opera. Ah, this indeed is music. This suits me. A tenor, large and fresh as the creation fills me. The orbic flex of his mouth is pouring and filling me full. I hear the train. Did soprano? What work with hers is this? The orchestra whirls me wider than Uranus flies. It wrenches such ardors from me that I do not know I possess them. It sails me. I dab with bare feet. They are licked by the indolent waves. I am cut by bitter and angry hail. I lose my breath, steeped amid honeyed morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death. At length let up again and feel the puzzle of puzzles in that we call being to be in any form. What is that? Round and round we go, all of us, and never come back thither. If nothing lay more developed than a quahog and its callous shell were enough. Mine is no calisthenics. I have instant conductors all over me. Whether I pass or stop, they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me. I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy. To touch my person to someone else's is about as much as I can stand. Is this, then a touch quivering me to a new identity? Flames and ether making a rush from my own veins, treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them, my flesh and blood playing out like lightning to strike what is hardly different than myself on all sides, prurient provokers stiffening my limbs, straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip, behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial, depriving me of my best, as for a purpose, unbuttoning my clothes, holding me by the bare waist, deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight in the pasture fields, immodestly sliding the fellow Senses away, they bribe to swap off with touch and go and gauze at the edges of me. No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger. Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them awhile. They all uniting to stand in my headland and worry me. The sentries desert every other part of me. They have left me helpless to a red marauder. They have all come to the headland to witness and assist against me. I am given up by traitors. I talk wildly, I have lost my wits, and I, and nobody else am the greatest traitor. I went myself first to the headland. My own hands carried me there. You villain. Touch, what are you doing? My breath is tight in my throat. Unclench your floodgates. You are too much for me. Blind, loving, resting touch sheathed, hooded, sharp toothed touch. Did it make you ache so? Leaving me parting tracked by arriving perpetual payment of perpetual loan, Rich showering rain and recompense richer afterward. Sprouts take and accumulate, stand by the curb, prolific and vital landscape projected, masculine, full sized and golden. All truths wait in all things. They neither hasten their own delivery nor resisted. They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, the insignificant as big to me as any what is less or more than a touch. Logic in sermons never convince. The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so, only what nobody denies is so. A minute and a drop of me settle my brain. I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps, and I compend if compend is the meat of a man or woman in his summit and flower. There is feeling they have for each other, and they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific, and until one and all shall delight us and we them. I believe a leaf of grass is no less than a journey work from the stars. And the pismire is equally perfect and a grain of sand and the egg of the wren and the tree toad is the chef d' oeuvre the highest. And the running BlackBerry would adorn the parlors of heaven. And the narrowest hinge in my hands puts to scorn all machinery. And the crow, crunching with depressed head, surpasses any statue. And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels. I find I incorporate ganas coal, long threaded moss, fruits, grains, esculent roots, and am stuck it with quadrupeds and birds all over, and have distanced what is behind me for good Reasons, but call anything back again when I desire it. In vain the speeding of shyness. In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach. In vain the mastodon retreats beneath its own powdered bones. In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes. In vain the ocean setting in hollows and the great monsters lying low. In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky. In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs. In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods. In vain the razor billed auk sails far north to Labrador. I fall quickly. I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff. I think I could turn and live with animals. They're so placid and self contained. I stand and look at them long and long. They do not sweat and whine about their condition. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things. Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. So they show their relations to me and I accept them. They bring me tokens of myself. They evince them plainly in their possession. I wonder where they get those tokens. Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them myself, Moving forward then and now and forever, gathering and showing more always and with Velocity no. 2 exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrances, Picking out here one that I love. And now go with them on brotherly terms. A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses. Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears, limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground. Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, Ears finely cut, flexibly moving. His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him. His well built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around. In return I but used you for a moment. Then I resign you stallion. Why do I need your paces when I'm myself out galloping even as I stand or sit, Passing faster than you space and time. Now I see it is true what I guess it at, what I guessed when I loaf it in the grass, what I guess it while I lay alone in my bed. And again as I walk at the beach of the paling stars of the morning, My ties and ballasts leave me. My elbows rest in sea gaps, I skirt sierras, my palms over continents. I am afoot with my vision by the city's quadrangular houses and log huts Camping with lumbermen along the ruts of the turnpike along the dry gulch and rivulet bed Weeding my onion patcher, hoeing rows of carrots and parsnips crossing savannas, trailing in forests prospecting gold, digging girding the trees of a new purchase Scorch it ankle deep by the hot sand Hauling my boat down the shallow river where the panther walks to and fro in a limb overhead where the buck turns furiously at the hunter where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock where the otter is feeding on fish where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps in the bayou where the black bear is searching for roots or honey where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle shaped tail over the growing sugar over the yellow flowered cotton plant over the rice in its low moist field over the sharp peaked farmhouse with its scalloped scum and slender shoots from the gutters over the western persimmon, over the long leafd corn over the delicate blue flower flax over the white and brown buckwheat a hummer and buzzer there were the rest over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the bush where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the white lot where the bat flies in the seventh month eve where the great gold bug drops through the sky where the brook puts out the roots in the old tree and the flows of the meadow where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their hides where the cheesecloth hangs in the kitchen where andirons straddle the hearth slab where cobwebs fell in festoons from the rafters where the trip hammers crash where the press is whirling its cylinders where the human heart beats with terrible throws under its ribs where the pear shaped balloon is floating aloft, floating at myself and looking composedly down where the life car is drawn on the slip noose where the heat hatches pale green eggs in the dented sand where the she well swims with her calf and never forsakes it where the steamship trails hind ways its long pennant of smoke where the fin of the shark cuts like a black chip out of the water where the half burned brig is riding on unknown currents where shells grow to her slimy deck where the dead are corrupting below where the dense starred flag is borne at the head of the regiments approaching Manhattan up by the long stretching island under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance upon a doorstep, upon the horse block of hardwood outside, upon the racecourse or enjoying picnics or jigs or a good game of baseball at he festivals with blackguard jibes and ironical license bull dances drinking and laughter at the cider mill tasting the sweets of the brown mash sucking the juice through a straw at apple peelings, wanting kissings for all the red fruit I find at musters, beach parties, friendly bees, huskings and house raisings where the mockingbird sounds his delicious gurgle, cackles and screams and weeps where the hay rick stands in the barnyard where the dry stalks are scattered, where the brood cow waits in the hovel, where the bull advances to do his masculine work with the stud to the mare, where the cock is treading the hen, where the heifer's browse, where geese nip their food with short jerks, where sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie, where herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and near, where the hummingbird shimmers, where the neck of the long lived swan is curving and winding, where the laughing gull scoots by the shore, where she laughs her near human laugh, where beehive ranges on the gray bench and the garden half hid by high weeds where band necked partridges roost in a ring in the ground with their heads out, where beef burial coaches enter the arched gates of a cemetery, where winter wolves back amid wastes of snow and icicle trees, where the yellow crowned heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds upon small crabs, where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon, where the katydid works her chromatic reed on the walnut tree over the wall through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver wired leaves, through the salt lick of orange glade or under conical firs, through the gymnasium, through the curtained saloon, through the office or public hall pleased with the native and pleased with the foreign and pleased with the new and old, pleased with the homely woman as well as the handsome, pleased with the Quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously, pleased with the tune of the choir of the whitewashed church, pleased with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher impressed seriously by the camp meeting, looking in the shop windows of Broadway, the whole looking in the shop windows Of Broadway, the whole forenoon flatting the flesh of my nose in the thick plate glass, Wandering the same afternoon with my face turned to the clouds or down a lane or along the beach. My right and left arms are on the sides of two friends and I in the middle coming home with the silent and dark cheeked bush boy behind me. He rides at the drape of the day far from the settlement, Studying the print of animals feet where the moccasin print by the cod at the hospital, Reaching lemonade to a feverish patient nigh the coffin corpse when all is still examining with a candle, voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure, hurrying with the modern crowd as eager and fickle as any hot toward one I hate, as eager and fickle as any hot toward one I hate Renny in my madness to knife him Solitary at midnight in my backyard, my thoughts gone from me a long while, Walking the old hills of Judea with a beautiful gentle God by my side, Speeding through space, speeding through heaven and the stars, speeding amid the seven satellites in the broad ring in the diameter of 80,000 miles, speeding with tailed meteors throwing fireballs like the rest of the carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly. Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, backing and filling, appearing and disappearing. I tread day and night such roads. I visit the orchards of spheres and look at the product. I look at quintillions ripen'd and look at quintillions green. I fly those flights of a fluid and swallowing soul. My course runs below the soundings of plummets. I help myself to material and immaterial. No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me. I anchor my ship for a little while only My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me. I go hunting polar furs and the seal leaping chasms With a pike pointed staff clinging to topples of brittle and blue. I ascend to the fore tuck, I take my plate. Late at night in the crow's nest we sail the Arctic sea. It is plenty light enough through the clear atmosphere. I stretch around in the wonderful beauty. The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them. The scenery is plain in all directions. The white top mountains show in the distance. I fling out my fancies toward them. We are approaching some great battlefield in which we are soon to be engaged. We pass the colossal outposts of the encampment. We pass with still feet and caution. Or we are entering by the suburbs, some vast and ruined city. The block and fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe. I am a free companion. I bivouac by invading watch fires. I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself. I tighten her all night to my thighs and lips. My voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs that fetch my man's body up dripping and drown it. I understand the large hearts of heroes, the courage of present times and all times. How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship and death chasing it up and down the storm. How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch and was faithful of days and faithful of nights and talked in large letters and a board. Be of good cheer, we will not desert you. How he followed with them and tacked with them in three days and would not give it up. How he saved the drifting company at last. How the lank loose gowned women looked when they boated from side of their prepared graves. How the silent old faced infants and lifted sick and the sharp lipped unshaven men. All this I swallow. It tastes good. I like it well. It becomes mine. I am the man. I suffered. I was there. The disdain and calmness of martyrs. The mother of old condemned for a witch burnt with dry wood. Her children gazing on. The hounded slave that flags in the race leans by the fence, blowing covered with sweat, the twinges that sting like needles, his legs and neck, the murderous buckshot and the bullets. All these I feel are. Am. I am the hounded slave. I wince at the bite of the dogs. Hell and despair are upon me. Crack and again crack the marksman. I clutch the rails of the fence, my gourd dribs thinned with the ooze of my skin. I fall on the weeds and stones. The riders spur their unwilling horses haul close, taunt my dizzy ears and beat me violently over the head with whip stocks. Agonies are one of my changes of garments. Do not ask the wounded person how he feels. I myself become the wounded person. My heart turns livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe. I am the mashed fireman with breastbone broken. Tumbling walls buried me in their debris. Heat and smoke I inspired. I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades. I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels. They have cleared the beams away. They tenderly life me forth. I lie in the night air in my red shirt. The pervading hush is for my sake painless after all I lie exhausted, but not so unhappy. White and beautiful are the faces around me the heads are bared of their fire caps. The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches, distant and dead resuscitate they show as the dial or move as the hands of me. I am the clock myself. I am an old artillerist. I tell of my fort's bombardment. I am there again. Again. The long roll of drummers. Again the attacking cannon, mortars again. To my listening ears, the cannon responsive. I take part. I see and hear the whole. The cries, curses, roar, the plaudits for well aimed shots. The ambulanza slowly passing, trailing its red drip. Workmen searching after damages, making indispensable repairs. The fall of grenades through the rent roof. The fan shaped explosion. The whiz of limbs, head, stone, wood, iron, high in the air. Again gurgles the mouth of my dying general. He furiously waves his hand. He gasps through the clot. Mind not me. Mind the entrenchments. Now I tell you what I knew in Texas, in my early youth. I tell not the fall of the Alamo. No one escaped to tell the fall of the Alamo. The hundred and fifty are dumb. Yet at Alamo. Tis the tale of the murder in cold blood of 412 young men retreating. They had formid in the hollow square with their baggage for breastworks. 900 lives out of the surrounding enemies. 9 times their number was the price they took in advance. The colonel was wounded and their ammunition gone. They treated for an honorable capitulation, received writing and seal, gave up their arms and marched back. Prisoners, war. They were the glory of the race of rangers, matchless with horses, rifle, song, supper, courtship. Large, turbulent, generous, handsome, proud and affectionate. Bearded, sunburnt, dressed in the free costumes of hunters. Not a single one over 30 years of age. The second first day morning, they were brought out in squads and massacred. It was a beautiful early summer. The work commenced about five o' clock and was over by eight. None obeyed the command to kneel. Some made a mad and helpless rush. Some stood stark and strayed. A few fell at once shot in the temple or heart. The living and dead lay together. The maimid and mangle had dug in the dirt. The newcomers saw them there. Some half kill it, attempted to crawl away. They were dispatched with bayonets and battered with blunts of muskets. A youth not 17 years old seized his assassin till two more came to release him. The three were torn all over and covered with the boy's blood. At 11 o' clock began the burning of the bodies. That is the tale of the murder of the 412 young men. Would you hear of an old time sea fight? Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and stars? List to the yarn, as my grandfather's father, the sailor, told it to me. Our foe was no skulk in a ship, I tell you, said he, his was the surly English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer. Never was and never will be. Along the lowered eve he came horribly raking us. We closed with him. The yards entangled. The cannon touched my captain lashed fast with his own hands. We had received some 18 pound shots under the water. On our lower gun deck two large pieces had burst at the first fire, killing all around and blowing up overhead. Fighting at sundown, fighting at dark, 10 o' clock at night the full moon went up. Our leaks in the gain and 5ft of water reported the master at arm. Loosing. The prisoners confined in the afterhold, to give them a chance for themselves to transit to and from the magazine is now stopped by the sentinels. They see so many strange faces they do not know whom to trust. Our frigate takes fire. The others ask if we demand quarter, if our colors are struck and the fighting done. No. I laugh, content, for I hear the voice of my little captain. We have not struck. He composedly cries. We have just begun our part of the fighting. Only three guns are in use. One is directed by the captain himself against the enemy's main mast. Two well served with grape and canister, silence his musketry and clear his decks. The tops alone. Second, the fire of this little battery, especially the main top. They hold out bravely during the whole of the action. Not a moment cease the leaks. Gain fast in the pumps. The fire eats toward the powder magazine. One of the pumps has been shot away. It is generally thought we were sinking. Serene stands the little captain. He's not hurried. His voice is neither high nor low. His eyes give more light to us than our battle lanterns. Toward 12 there is beams of the moon. They surrender to us. Stretched and still lies the moonlight. Two great hulls motionless on the breast of the darkness. Our vessel riddled and slowly sinking, preparations to pass to the one we have conquered. The captain in the quarter deck, coldly giving his orders, threw a countenance as white as a sheet. Nearby, the corpse of the child that served in the cabin. The dead face of an old salt with long white hair and carefully curled whiskers. The flames, spite of all that can be done, flickering aloft and below, the husky voices of the two or three officers yet fit for Duty. Formless stacks of bodies and bodies by themselves. Dabs of flesh upon masts and spars cut of cordage. Dangle of rigging. Slight shock of the soothe of the waves. Black and impassive guns. Litter of powder parcels. Strong scent. A few large stars overhead, silent and mournful. Shining delicate sniffs of sea breeze. Smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore. Death messages given in charge to survivors. The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw. Wheeze, cluck swash of falling blood. Short wild scream and long dull tapering groan. These so these irretrievable. You laggards there on guards, look to your arms. In at the concrete doors they crowd. I am possessed. Embody all presence outlawed or suffering. See myself in prison shaped like another man and feel the dull unintermitted pain for me. The keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch. It is I let out in the morning and bar it at night. Not a mutineer walks handcuffed to jail, but I am handcuffed to him and walk by his side. I am less jolly out there and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips. Not a youngster is taken for larceny, but I go up too and am tried and sentenced. Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp. But I also lie at the last gasp. My face is ash colored. My sinews gnarl away from me. People retreat. Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them. I project my hat, sit shamefaced and beg. Enough.

[A]

Enough.

[B]

Enough. Somehow I have been stunned. Stand back. Give me a little time. Beyond my cuffed head slumbers, dreams gaping. I discover myself on the verse of an unusual mistake. That I could forget the mockers and insults. That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of bludgeons and hammers. That I could look with a separate look at my own crucifixion and bloody crowning. I remember now. I resume the overstayed fraction. The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it or to any graves. Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me. I troop forth, replenished with supreme power, one of an average unending procession. Inland and seacoast we go and pass all boundary lines, our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth. The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years. Levis, I salute you. Come forward. Continue your annotations, continue your questionings. The friendly and Flowing savage. Who is he? Is he waiting for civilization or past it and mastering it? Is he some southwesterner, raised outdoors? Is he Canadian? Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California, the mountains, prairie life, bush life, or sailor from the sea? Wherever he goes, men and women accept and desire him. They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them. Behavior lawless as snowflakes, Words simple as grass, uncombed head, laughter and naivete, slow stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations. They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers. They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath. They fly out of the glance of his eyes, flaunt of the sunshine. I need not your bask lie over you. Light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also. Earth. You seem to look for something at my hands. Say, old Topknot, what do you want, man or woman? I might tell how I like you, but cannot and might tell what is in me and what is in you, but cannot and might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days. Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity. When I give, I give myself impotent. Loosen the knees, open your scarf and chops till I blow grit within you, spread your palms and life the flaps of your pockets. I am not to be denied, I compel. I have stores plenty and to spare in anything I have, I bestow. I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me. You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will enfold you to cottonfield drudge or cleaner of privies. I lean on his right cheek, I put the family kiss, and in my soul I swear I never will deny him. On women fit for conception, I start bigger and nimbler babes. This day I'm jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics to anyone dying thither. I speed and twist the knob of the door, turn the bedclothes toward the foot of the bed. Let the physician and priest go home. I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will. O despair. Here is my neck. But, God, you shall not go down. Hang your whole weight upon me. I dilate you with tremendous breath I buoy you up. Every room of the house do I fill with armed force. Lovers of me, bafflers of graves sleep I, and they keep guard all night. No doubt not disease shall dare lay a finger upon you. I have embraced you and henceforth possess you to myself. And when you rise in the morning, you will find what I tell you is So I am he, bringing help for the sick as they pant on their backs. And for the strong upright men I bring yet more needed help. I heard what was said of the universe, heard it and heard it for several thousand years. It is middling well, as far as it goes. But is that all? Magnifying and applying kamai a bidding at the start of old cautious hucksters taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah lithograph and Kronos Zeus his son and Hercules his grandson, buying draughts of Osiris, Isis, Belus, Brahma, Buddha and my portfolio placing Manito loose Allah on a leaf, the crucifix engraved with Odin and the hideous face of Exotilli and every idol and image taking them all for what they are worth and not a cent more, admitting they were alive and did the work for their days they bore mites as the unfledged birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves, accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself, bestowing them freely of each man and woman I see, discovering as much or more in a frame or framing a house, putting higher claims for him there with his rolled up sleeves, driving the mallet and chisel, not objecting to special revelations, considering a curl of smoke or a hair in the back of my hand just as curious as any revelation lads a hold of fire engines and hook and ladder ropes no less to me than the gods of the antique wars, minding their voices peal through the crash of destruction, their brawny limbs passing safe over charred lathes, their white foreheads whole and unhurt out of the flames by the mechanic's wife with her babe at her nipple, interceding for every person born. Three scythes at harvest whizzing in a row from three lusty angels with shirts bagged out at their waists, the snag toothed holster with red hair redeeming sins past and to come selling all he possesses, traveling on foot to fee lawyers for his brother and sit by him while he is tried for forgery what was strewn in the amplest strewing the square rod about me and not filling the square rod then the bull and the bug never worshipped half enough dung and dirt more admirable than was dreamed, the supernatural of no account myself waiting my time to be one of the supremes, the day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best and be as prodigious by my life lumps, becoming already a creator, putting myself here and now to the ambushed womb of the shadows. A call in the midst of the crowd, my own voice orotund sweeping and final. Come, my children. Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates. Now the performer launches his nerve. He has passed the prelude and the reeds within easily written, lucid finger chords. I feel the thrum of climax and close my head slews round in my neck. Music rolls, but not from the organ. Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine. Ever the hard unsunk ground, Ever the eaters and drinkers, Ever the upward and downward sun, Ever the air and the ceaseless tides, Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real. Ever the old inexplicable query. Ever that thornd thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts, Ever the vexer's hoot, hoot till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth. Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life. Ever the bandage under the chin, Ever the trestles of death here and there with dimes in the eyes, walking to feed the greed of the belly, the brains liberally spooning tickets, buying, taking, selling, but into the feats never once going many sweating, ploughing, thrashing and then the chaff for payment received, A few idly owning and they the wheat continually claiming. This is the city and I am one of the citizens. Whatever interests. The rest interests me. Politics, wars, markets, newspapers, schools, the mayor and councils, banks, tariffs, steamships, factories, stock, stores, real estate and personal estate. The little plentiful mannequins skipping around in collars and tailored coats. I am aware who they are. They are positively not worms or fleas. I acknowledge the duplicates of myself. The weakest and shallowest is deathless with me, what I do and say. The same waits for them, every thought that flounders in me, the same flounders in them. I know perfectly well my egotism, know my omnivorous lines, and must not write any less and would fetch you whoever you are. Flush with myself, not words of routine, this song of mine, but abruptly to question, to leap beyond yet nearer. Bring this printed and bound book but the printer and the printing office boy, the well taken photographs, but your wife or friend close and solid in your arms. The black ship mailed with iron, her mighty guns and turrets but the pluck of the captain and the engineers. In the house is the dishes and fare and furniture but the host and hostess and the look out of their eyes the sky up there yet here or next door or across the way the saints and sages in history but you yourself, sermons, creeds, theology, but the fathomless human brain and what is reason in what is love and what is life? I do not despise you priests all time the world over. My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern, believing I shall come again upon the Earth after 5,000 years waiting responses from oracles honoring the gods, saluting the sun, making a fetish of the first rock or stump, powwowing with sticks in the circle of obis, helping the lama or Brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols, dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, wrapped and austere in the woods of a gymnosophist, drinking mead from the skullcap to Shastas and Vedas and admirants, minding the Koran, walking with Teokallis spotted with gore from the stone and the knife, beating the serpent's skin drum, accepting the Gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing assuredly that he is divine to the mass kneeling, or the Puritan's prayer, rising or sitting patiently in a pew, ranting and frothing in my insane crisis, or waiting deadlike till my spirit arouses me, looking forth on pavement and land, or outside of pavement and land, belonging to the winders of the circuits of circuits, one of that centripetal and centrifugal gang. I turn and talk like a man leaving charges before a journey, downhearted doubters, dull and excluded, frivolous, sullen, moping, angry, affected, disheartened, ascetical. I know every one of you. I know the sea of torment, doubt, despair and unbelief. How the flukes splash, how they contort rapid as lightning, with spasms and spouts of blood. Be at peace, bloody flukes of doubters and sullen mopers. I take my place among you as much as among any. The past is the push of you, me, all precisely the same, and what is yet untried and afterwards is for you, me, all precisely the same. I do not know what is untried and afterward, but I know it will in its turn prove sufficient and cannot fail. Each who passes is considerate, each who stops is considerate. Not a single one can it fail. It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried, nor the young woman who has died and put by his side, nor the little child that peeped in at the door and then drew back and was never seen again, nor the old man who has lived without purpose and Feels it was bitterness worse than gall. Nor him in the poorhouse tubercle by rum and the bad disorder, nor the numberless, slaughtered and wrecked, nor the brutish Kobu Khalid, the odger of humanity, nor the sacks merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in. Nor anything in the earth or down in the oldest graves of the earth, nor anything in the myriads of spheres, nor the myriads of myriads that inhabit them, nor the present, nor the least wisp that is known. It is time to explain myself. Let us stand up. What is known, I strip away. I launch all men and women forward with me into the unknown. The clock indicates the moment, but what does eternity indicate? We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers. There are trillions ahead and trillions ahead of them. Births have brought us richness and variety, and other births will bring us richness and variety. I do not call one greater or smaller. That which fills its period and place is equal to any. Were mankind murderous or jealous? Upon you, my brother, my sister? I am sorry for you. They are not murderous or jealous upon me. All has been gentle with me. I keep no account with lamentation. What have I to do with lamentation? I am an acme of things accomplished, and I an encloser of things to be. My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs, and on every step bunches of ages and larger bunches between the steps, all below duly travelled and still I mount and mount, rise after rise, bow the phantoms behind me, Afar down I see the huge first nothing. I know I was even there. I waded unseen in all ways and slept through the lethargic mist, and took my time and took no hurt from the fetid carbon. Long I was hugged close, Long and long. Immense have been the preparations for me, Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me. Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like cheerful boatmen for room to my stars kept aside in their own rings, they sent influences to look after what was to hold me before I was born. Out of my mother generations guided me. My embryo has never been torpid. Nothing could overlay it. For it the nebula cohered to an orb. The long slow strata piled to rest it on vast vegetables gave it sustenance. Monstrous sauroids transported it in their mouths and deposited it with care. All forces have been steadily employed to complete and delight me. Now on this spot I stand with my robust soul. O span of youth, ever push it elasticity, O manhood balanced, florid and full. My lovers Suffocate me, Crowding my lips thick in the pores of my skin, Jostling me through streets and public halls, coming naked to me at night, crying by day ahoy from the rocks of the river, Swinging and chirping over my head, calling my name with flower beds, vines, tangled underbrush, lightning on every moment of my life, Bussing my body with soft balsamic buses noiselessly passing handfuls of their hearts and giving them to be mine. Old age superbly rising welcome ineffable grace of dying days. Every condition promulges not only itself. It promulges what grows after and out of itself. And the dark hush promulges as much as any. I open my scuttle at night and see the far sprinkled systems and all I see multiplied as high as I can. Cipher edge but the rim of the FL farther systems, wider and wider they spread, expanding always expanding outward and outward and forever outward. My son has his son. And around him obediently wheels he joins with his partners a group of superior circuit and greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest. Inside them there is no stoppage and never can be stoppage. If I, you and the worlds and all beneath are upon their surfaces. Were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would not avail in the long run. We should surely bring up again where we now stand and surely go as much farther and then farther and farther. A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues. Do not hazard the span or make it impatient. They are but parts. Anything is but a part. See ever so far there is limitless space outside of that count ever so much there is limitless time outside of that My rendezvous is appointed. It is certain the Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms. The great Camerado, the lover true, for whom I pine, will be there. I know I have the best of time and space and was never measured and never will be measured. I tramp a perpetual journey. Come. Listen. All my signs are A rain proof coat, good shoes and a staff cut from the winds. No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair. I have no chair, no church, no philosophy. I lead no man to a dinner table, library, exchange. But each man and each woman of you I led upon a knoll, My left hand hooking you round the waist, my right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road. Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere, on water and on land. Shoulder your duds, dear son, and I will mine. And let us hasten forth. Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go. If you tire, give me both burdens and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip. And in due time you shall repay the same service to me. For after we start, we never lie by again. This day before dawn, I ascended a hill and looked at the crowded heavens. And I said to my spirit, when we become the infolders of those orbs and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be filled and satisfied then? And my spirit said, no. We but level that lift to pass and continue beyond. You are also asking me questions. And I hear you. I answer. That I cannot answer. You must find out for yourself. Sit a while, dear son. Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink. But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you with a goodbye kiss and open the gate for your egress. Hence. Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams. Now I wash the gum from your eyes. You must have it yourself, to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life. Long have you timidly waited, holding a plank by the shore. Now I will you to be a bold swimmer, to jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly dash with your hair. I am teacher of athletes. He that by me spreads a wider breast than mine own proves the width of my own. He most honors my style. Who learns under it to destroy the teacher. The boy I love the same becomes a man not through derived power, but in his own right, Wicked rather than virtuous, out of conformity or fear. Fond of his sweetheart, relishing well his steak, Unrequited love or slight, Cutting him worse than sharp steel cuts first rate. To ride, to fight, to hit the bull's eye, to sail a skiff, to sing a song or play the banjo, Preferring scars in the beards and faces pitted with smallpox over all leatherers and those well tanned. To those who keep out of the sun I teach Straying for me. Yet who can stray from me? I follow you wherever you are from the present hour. My words itch at your ears till you understand them. I do not say these things for a dollar or to fill up time while I wait for a boat. It is you talking just as much as myself. I act as the tongue of you, tied in your mouth. And mine. It begins to be loosened. I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house. And I swear I will never translate myself at all, only to him or her who privately stays with me in the open air. If you would understand me, go to the heights of the water shore. The nearest gnat is an explanation and a drop or motion of the waves, a key, the maul, the oar, the hand saw. Second my words. No shuttered room or school can commune with me but roughs and little children better than they. The young mechanic is closest to me. He knows me well. The woodman that takes his axe and jug with him shall take me along with him all day. The farm boy ploughing in the fields, good at the sound of my voice. In vessels that sail my wordsail I go with fishermen and seamen and love them. The soldier campbed or upon the march is mine. On the night ear of the pending battle many seek me, and I do not fail them on that solemn night it may be their last. Those that know me seek me. My face rubs through the hunter's face when he lies down alone in his blanket. The driver, thinking of me, does not mind the jolt of his wagon. The young mother and old mother comprehend me. The girl and the wife rest the needle for a moment and forget where they are. They and all would resume what I have told them. I have said that the soul is not more than the body. And I have said that the body is not more than the soul. And nothing, not God, is greater to one than oneself is. And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral dressed in a shroud. An eye or ear, pocketless of a dime, may purchase the pick of the earth. And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pods confound the learning of all times. And there is no trade or employment. But the young man following it may become a hero. And there is no object so soft, but it makes the hub for the wheel of the universe. And I say to any man or woman, let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. And I say to mankind, be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God. No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death. I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least. Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself. Why would I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the 24 and each moment Then in the faces of men and women, I see God. And in my own face in the glass I find letters from God dropped in the street. And every one is signed by God's name. And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoever I go, others will punctually come forever and ever. And as to you death and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me to his work without flinching the accoutre of dreams. I see the elder hand pressing, receiving, supporting. I recline by the sills of the exquisite flexible doors and mark the outlet and mark the relief and escape. And as to you corpse, I think you are a good manure. But that does not offend me. I smell the white roses, sweet, scented and growing. I reach to the leafy lips, I reach to the polished breasts of melons. And as to you life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths. No doubt I have died myself 10,000 times before. I hear you whispering there. O stars of heaven, O suns, O grasses of graves, O perpetual transfers and promotions. If you do not say anything, how can I say anything? Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest, of the moons that descend the steeps of this soughing twilight, toss sparkles of day and dusk, toss in the black stems of decay in the muck, toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs I ascend from the night I perceive that the ghostly glimmer and noonday sunbeams reflected and debauched to the steady and sensual from the offspring, great or small, there is that in me. I do not know what it is, but I know it is in me wrenched and sweaty, calm and cool. Then my body becomes. I sleep. I sleep long. I do not know it. It is without name. It is a word unsaid. It is not in any dictionary utterance. Something that swings on more than the earth I swing on. To wit, the creation is the friend whose embracing awakes me. Perhaps I might tell more outlines. I plead for my brothers and sisters. Do you see, O my brothers and sisters? It is not chaos or death. It is form, union, plan. It is eternal life. It is happiness. The past and present wilt. I have filled them, emptied them in process, to fill my next fold of the future listener up there. What have you to confide in me? Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening, talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer. Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. I concentrate toward them that are nigh. I wait at the door. Slab, who has done his day's work? Who will be soonest through with his supper? Who wishes to walk with me? Will you speak before I am gone? Will you prove already too late? The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me. He complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed. I too am untranslatable. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world the last scud of day holds back for me. It flings my likeness after the rest. And true as any of the shallow wilds, it coaxes me to the vapor. In the dusk I depart as air. I shake my white locks at the runaway sun. I effuse my flesh in eddies and I drift in its lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love. If you want me again, look for me under your boot soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean. But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, and filter and fiber your blood. Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another, I stop somewhere, waiting for you. Radiotopia from prx. Radiotopia from prx.