Body

Uncorseted, her friendly bust Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

He knew the anguish of the marrow The ague of the skeleton; No contact possible to flesh Allayed the fever of the bone.

Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes.

He is like a man In the body of a violent beast. Its muscles are his own… The lion sleeps in the sun. Its nose is on its paws. It can kill a man.

Beauty is momentary in the mind— The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body’s beauty lives.

A great nose indicates a great man— Genial, courteous, intellectual, Virile, courageous.

If soul may look and body touch, Which is the more blest?

I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes, But when this soul, its body off, Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows.

Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?

My body which my dungeon is, And yet my parks and palaces.

Thou mastering me God! giver of breath and bread; World’s strand, sway of the sea; Lord of living and dead; Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh, And after it almost unmade, what with dread, Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh? Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.

To men a man is but a mind. Who cares What face he carries or what form he wears? But woman’s body is the woman. O Stay thou, my sweetheart, and do never go.

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.

If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.

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 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.

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.

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!

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul.

I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers, Leastways if you reckon two thumbs; Long ago he was one of the singers, But now he is one of the dumbs.

In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.

This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb, So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood So in my veins red life might stream again, And thou be conscience-calm’d—see here it is— I hold it towards you.