Leaves of Grass First and Death-Bed Editions (35 page)

 

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 around 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.
¹³

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 woods,
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 lead 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 any one 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 look’d at the crowded
heaven,
And I said to my spirit
When we become the enfolders of those
orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them,
shall we be fill’d 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 good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress
hence.

 

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every
moment of your life.

 

Long have you timidly waded 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 the teacher of athletes,
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my 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 a 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 on the banjo,
Preferring scars and the beard and faces pitted with small-pox
over all latherers,
And those well-tann’d to those that keep out of the sun.

 

I teach straying from me, yet who can stray from me?
I follow you whoever 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 the 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, in mine it begins to be loosen’d.)

 

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 or water-shore,
The nearest gnat is an explanation, and a drop or motion of waves
a key,
The maul, the oar, the hand-saw, second my words.

 

No shutter’d 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
with him all day,
The farm-boy ploughing in the field feels good at the sound of
my voice,
In vessels that sail my words sail, I go with fishermen and seamen
and love them.

 

The soldier camp’d or upon the march is mine,
On the night ere 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 to 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 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 one’s self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own
funeral drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the
earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds
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 a hub for the wheel’d
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 should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, 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 dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d
by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe‘er
I go,
Others will punctually come for ever 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 accoucheur comes,
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 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 polish’d breasts of
melons.

 

And as to you Life I reckon you are the leavings of many
deaths,
(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.)

 

I hear you whispering there O stars of heaven,
O suns—O grass of graves—O perpetual transfers and
promotions,
If you do not say any thing how can I say any thing?

 

Of the turbid pool that lies in the autumn forest,
Of the moon that descends the steeps of the soughing
twilight,
Toss, sparkles of day and dusk—toss on the black stems that decay
in the muck,
Toss to the moaning gibberish of the dry limbs.

 

I ascend from the moon, I ascend from the night,
I perceive that the ghastly glimmer is noonday sunbeams
reflected,
And debouch to the steady and central 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.

 

Wrench’d 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, symbol.

 

Something it swings on more than the earth I swing on,
To it 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 fill’d them, emptied them.
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

 

Listener up there! what have you to confide to 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 on the
door-slab.
Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be 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 on the shadow’d
wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

 

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in 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 fibre your blood.

 

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
¹⁴

CHILDREN OF ADAM
¹⁵

To the garden the world anew ascending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
Curious here behold my resurrection after slumber,
The revolving cycles in their wide sweep having brought me
again,
Amorous, mature, all beautiful to me, all wondrous,
My limbs and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for
reasons, most wondrous,
Existing I peer and penetrate still,
Content with the present, content with the past,
By my side or back of me Eve following,
Or in front, and I following her just the same.

From pent-up aching rivers,
From that of myself without which I were nothing,
From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand
sole among men,
From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus,
Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown
people,
Singing the muscular urge and the blending,
Singing the bedfellow’s song, (O resistless yearning!
O for any and each the body correlative attracting!
O for you whoever you are your correlative body! O it, more than
all else, you delighting!)
From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day,
From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them,
Seeking something yet unfound though I have diligently sought it
many a long year,
Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random,
Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals,
Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing,
Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds,
Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves,
Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting,
The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating,
The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body,
The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his
back lying and floating,
The female form approaching, I pensive, love-flesh tremulous
aching,
The divine list for myself or you or for any one making,
The face, the limbs, the index from head to foot, and what it
arouses,
The mystic deliria, the madness amorous, the utter abandonment,
(Hark close and still what I now whisper to you,
I love you, O you entirely possess me,
O that you and I escape from the rest and go utterly off, free and
lawless,
Two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming in the sea not more
lawless than we;)
The furious storm through me careering, I passionately trembling,
The oath of the inseparableness of two together, of the woman
that loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath
swearing,
(O I willingly stake all for you,
O let me be lost if it must be so!
O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think?
What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust
each other if it must be so;)
From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to,
The general commanding me, commanding all, from him
permission taking,
From time the programme hastening, (I have loiter’d too long as
it is.)
From sex, from the warp and from the woof,
¹⁶
From privacy, from frequent repinings alone,
From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near,
From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers
through my hair and beard,
From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or bosom,
From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk,
fainting with excess,
From what the divine husband knows, from the work of
fatherhood,
From exultation, victory and relief, from the bedfellow’s embrace
in the night,
From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms,
From the cling of the trembling arm,
From the bending curve and the clinch,
From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing,
From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as
unwilling to leave,
(Yet a moment O tender waiter,
^al
and I return,)
From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews,
From the night a moment I emerging flitting out,
Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for,
And you stalwart loins.