Morning Walt Whitman.....

[SirIsaacNewton]

Well I woke up this morning and checked the forum. Typical posts etc. Then I decided to read some Whitman which is a turn in a strange direction for me considering my other current reads are The Neutron Story and The Double Helix. I thought you might enjoy or maybe even laugh a little at this poem and its relevance to this forum....

Walt Whitman [3] from Song of Myself

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.

To elaborate is no avail, learned and unlearned feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entreatied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
That that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.

I am satisfied -- I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bedfellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets covered with white towels swelling the house with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?

I took off my tinfoil hat for a moment, breathed in the morning dew, and took another sip of my coffee. I hope you do the same.

 

[sgt z]

Mark Twain is different too