Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (18 page)

 

Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask .... lie over,
You light surfaces only .... I force the surfaces and the 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 it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
And might tell the pinings I have .... the pulse of my nights and
days.

 

Behold I do not give lectures or a little charity,
What I give I give out of myself.

 

You there, impotent, loose in the knees, open your scarfed chops
till I blow grit within you,
Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
I am not to be denied .... I compel .... I have stores plenty and
to spare,
And any thing 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 infold you.

 

To a drudge of the cottonfields or emptier 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 am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics.

To any one dying .... thither I speed and twist the knob of the door,

Turn the bedclothes toward the foot of the bed,
Let the physician and the priest go home.

 

I seize the descending man .... I raise him with resistless will.

O despairer, here is my neck,
By 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 an armed force .... lovers
of me, bafflers of graves:
Sleep! I and they keep guard all night;
Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay 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 strong upright men I bring yet more needed help.

 

I heard what was said of the universe,
Heard it and heard of several thousand years;
It is middling well as far as it goes .... but is that all?

 

Magnifying and applying come I,
²⁶
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
The most they offer for mankind and eternity less than a spirt of
my own seminal wet,
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah and laying them
away,
Lithographing Kronos and Zeus his son, and Hercules his
grandson,
Buying drafts of Osiris and Isis and Belus and Brahma and
Adonai,
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, and Allah on a leaf, and the
crucifix engraved,
With Odin, and the hideous-faced Mexitli, and all idols and images,
Honestly taking them all for what they are worth, and not a cent
more,
Admitting they were alive and did the work of their day,
Admitting they bore mites as for 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 on each man and woman
I see,
Discovering as much or more in a framer 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 on the back of my hand as curious as any
revelation;
Those ahold of fire-engines and hook-and-ladder ropes more 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 laths .... 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 hostler with red hair redeeming sins past and to
come,
Selling all he possesses and 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,
Guessing when I am it will not tickle me much to receive puffs
out of pulpit or print;
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, and my women and household and
intimates,
Now the performer launches his nerve .... he has passed his
prelude on the reeds within.

 

Easily written loosefingered chords! I feel the thrum of their climax and close.

 

My head evolves on my neck,
Music rolls, but not from the organ .... folks are around me, but
they are no household of mine.

 

Ever the hard and 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 and wicked and real,
Ever the old inexplicable query .... ever that thorned 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 on the eyes walking,
²⁷
To feed the greed of the belly the brains liberally spooning,
Tickets buying or taking or selling, but in to the feast never once
going;
Many sweating and ploughing and thrashing, and then the chaff
for payment receiving,
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, churches,
newspapers, schools,
Benevolent societies, improvements, banks, tariffs, steamships,
factories, markets,
Stocks and stores and real estate and personal estate.

 

They who piddle and patter here in collars and tailed coats ....
I am aware who they are .... and that they are not worms or
fleas,
I acknowledge the duplicates of myself under all the scrape-lipped
and pipe-legged concealments.

 

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 own egotism,
And know my omnivorous words, and cannot say any less,
And would fetch you whoever you are flush with myself.

 

My words are words of a questioning, and to indicate reality;
This printed and bound book .... but the printer and the
printing-office boy?
The marriage estate and settlement .... but the body and mind
of the bridegroom? also those of the bride?
The panorama of the sea .... but the sea itself?
The well-taken photographs .... but your wife or friend close and
solid in your arms?
The fleet of ships of the line and all the modern
improvements .... but the craft and pluck of the admiral?
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 and creeds and theology .... but the human brain, and
what is called reason, and what is called love, and what is
called life?

I do not despise you priests;
My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths,
Enclosing all worship ancient and modern, and all between
ancient and modern,
Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand
years,
Waiting responses from oracles .... honoring the gods ....
saluting the sun,
Making a fetish of the first rock or stump .... powowing with
sticks in the circle of obis
^s
,
Helping the lama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the
idols,
Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession .... rapt
and austere in the woods, a gymnosophist,
^t
Drinking mead from the skull-cup .... to shasta and vedas
admirant .... minding the koran,
^‡
Walking the teokallis,
^§
spotted with gore from the stone and
knife—beating the serpent-skin drum;
Accepting the gospels, accepting him that was crucified, knowing
assuredly that he is divine,
To the mass kneeling—to the puritan’s prayer rising—sitting
patiently in a pew,
Ranting and frothing in my insane crisis—waiting dead-like till
my spirit arouses me;
Looking forth on pavement and land, and outside of pavement
and land,
Belonging to the winders of the circuit of circuits.

 

One of that centripetal and centrifugal gang,
I turn and talk like a man leaving charges before a journey.
Down-hearted doubters, dull and excluded,
Frivolous sullen moping angry affected disheartened atheistical,
I know every one of you, and know the unspoken interrogatories,
By experience I know them.

 

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 and me and all precisely the same,
And the day and night are for you and me and all,
And what is yet untried and afterward is for you and me and all.

 

I do not know what is untried and afterward,
But I know it is sure and alive and sufficient.

 

Each who passes is considered, and each who stops is considered, and not a single one can it fail.

 

It cannot fail the young man who died and was buried,
Nor the young woman who died and was 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 with
bitterness worse than gall,
Nor him in the poorhouse tubercled by rum and the bad disorder,
Nor the numberless slaughtered and wrecked .... nor the brutish
koboo
^u
,
called the ordure of humanity,
Nor the sacs merely floating with open mouths for food to slip in,
Nor any thing in the earth, or down in the oldest graves of the earth,
Nor any thing in the myriads of spheres, nor one of 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?
Eternity lies in bottomless reservoirs .... its buckets are rising
forever and ever,
They pour and they pour and they exhale away.

 

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 and one smaller,
That which fills its period and place is equal to any.