Life and Existence

Nor for you, for one alone, Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Word over all, beautiful as the sky, Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world; For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead.

Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face of the Christ himself, Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight.

We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers!

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river.

As Adam early in the morning, Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep, Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach, Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, Be not afraid of my body.

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune.

If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself, In you I wrap a thousand onward years.

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.

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.

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

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.

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.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments.

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.

Steep’d amid honey’d morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death.

I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious.

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer, This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

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!