Thursday, November 09, 2006

On Reading Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" Again


"[...] 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."

You filter for our farthest flung
In accidents the day is more
Sun more of these blades those
In the sun you filter to zoom
Occluded actual fingers thumbing
Through leaves fingered all here

Now that is all.
A metaphor for:
Soldiers, the dead?

The atomic continuity of your universal shoe and hymnal
The convergences of one "and" with another unawaited
The noise of these things fluttering all this time in place
Fluttering in the voice of speech televised silently watched
This filter that filter world flows convulses through us streets
I will space space sovereign time time blades whistle rage
There are not leaves enough and information also suffers

Now, that is all.
A metaphor for:
The living, each being?

This filter commands an image sung
And heard in the newborn lyric
Of your hand reading the vaulted eyes
The seen on your lips mere man
On a bench who has waded word-upon-word
The "F" sounds land and pull
Origin from under us compounding

Now that is, all.
A metaphor for:
radical democracy?

Becoming grass on the ground, among it,
Grass from above, grass from the sky:
Or universalism? Or evolutionary love?
Or the advantages of co-related particulars?
"Untranslatable" (in Webster's)--

"You shall listen to all sides and filter them through your self."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

nice post, it's really interesting for me today, thx