The Complete Poetry of Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman

to be the poet of wickedness also.

      Washes and razors for foofoos . . . . for me freckles and a bristling beard.

      What blurt is it about virtue and about vice?

       Evil propels me, and reform of evil propels me . . . . I stand indifferent,

       My gait is no faultfinder’s or rejecter’s gait,

       I moisten the roots of all that has grown.

      Did you fear some scrofula out of the unflagging pregnancy?

       Did you guess the celestial laws are yet to be worked over and rectified?

      I step up to say that what we do is right and what we affirm is right . . . . and some is only the ore of right,

      Witnesses of us . . . . one side a balance and the antipodal side a balance,

       Soft doctrine as steady help as stable doctrine,

       Thoughts and deeds of the present our rouse and early start.

      This minute that comes to me over the past decillions,

       There is no better than it and now.

      What behaved well in the past or behaves well today is not such a wonder,

       The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.

      Endless unfolding of words of ages!

       And mine a word of the modern . . . . a word en masse.

      A word of the faith that never balks,

       One time as good as another time . . . . here or henceforward it is all the same to me.

      A word of reality . . . . materialism first and last imbueing.

      Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!

       Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac;

       This is the lexicographer or chemist . . . . this made a grammar of the old cartouches,

       These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,

       This is the geologist, and this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.

      Gentlemen I receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you,

       The facts are useful and real . . . . they are not my dwelling . . . . I enter by them to an area of the dwelling.

      I am less the reminder of property or qualities, and more the reminder of life,

       And go on the square for my own sake and for others’ sakes,

       And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipped,

      And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire.

      Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos,

       Disorderly fleshy and 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,

       And whatever I do or say I also return.

      Through me the afflatus surging and surging . . . . through me the current and index.

      I speak the password 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 slaves,

       Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons,

       Voices of the diseased 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 fatherstuff,

       And of the rights of them the others are down upon,

       Of the trivial and flat and foolish and despised,

       Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung.

      Through me forbidden voices,

       Voices of sexes and lusts . . . . voices veiled, and I remove the veil,

       Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured.

      I do not press my finger 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 and 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 touched from;

       The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer,

       This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.

      If I worship any particular thing it shall be some of the spread of my body;

       Translucent mould of me it shall be you,

       Shaded ledges and rests, firm masculine coulter, 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 washed sweet-flag, timorous pond-snipe, nest of guarded duplicate eggs, it shall be you,

       Mixed tussled hay of head and beard and 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 liveoak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you,

       Hands I have taken, face I have kissed, mortal I have ever touched, it shall be you.

      I dote on myself . . . . there is that 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.

      To walk up my stoop is unaccountable . . . . I pause to consider if it really be,

       That I eat and drink is spectacle enough for the great authors and schools,

       A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.

      To behold the daybreak!

       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,