Poem of the Week 1/15/2012: from Song of Myself

5 
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, 
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, 
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, 
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, 
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, 
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, 
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, 
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, 
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, 
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, 
And that a kelson of the creation is love, 
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields, 
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them, 
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.

6 
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; 
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

 

Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass

Always worth a read.