Song of Myself
XXIV
by Walt
Whitman |
Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son, |
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding, |
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and 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 afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index.
|
I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy, |
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the
same terms.
|
Through me many long dumb voices, |
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves, |
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, |
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 deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised, |
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
|
Through me forbidden voices, |
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil, |
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.
|
I do not press my fingers across my mouth, |
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and 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 touch'd
from, |
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, |
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
|
If I worship one think 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 colter it shall be you ! |
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you ! |
You my rich blood ! your milky stream 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 wash'd sweet-flag ! timorous pond-snipe ! nest of guarded duplicate
eggs ! it shall be you ! |
Mix'd tussled 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 against 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 kiss'd, mortal I have ever touch'd, it shall be
you.
|
I dote on myself, there is a lot of me and all 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 emit, 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 day-break ! |
The little light fades the immense and 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, |
Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.
|
The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction, |
The heav'd challenge from the east that moment over my head, |
The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master ! |
Walt Whitman | Classic
Poems
|
|
[ Song of Myself XXIV ] [ Song of Myself LII ] [ Crossing Brooklyn Ferry ] [ When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd ] [ To a Locomotive in Winter ] |