Happy Birthday Mr. Whitman

 

A day to celebrate one of the greats. I have above my door a sign that reads: “What Would Walt Whitman Do?” I ask myself this all the time. Usually, the answer is: write something. He is a writer that leads me to many epiphanies. Here are some excerpts from his great poem, “Song of Myself.”

***

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of beginning and the end,

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

***

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and the women,

And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,

And ceas’d the moment life apprear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,

And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

Has anyone supposed it is lucky to be born?

I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. 

***

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new washed’d babe, and am not contained

between my hats and boots,

And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,

The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

 ***

Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,

For me those that have been boys and that love women,

For the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,

For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the mothers of mothers,

For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,

For me children and the begetters of children.

 ***

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale, nor discarded,

I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,

And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be shaken away.

***

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise,

Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,

Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,

Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine,

 ***

I resist any thing better than my own diversity,

Breathe the air but leave plenty after me,

And am not stuck up, and am in my place.

 ***

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 under the runaway sun,

I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift 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.