I.
Whitman, you hearthrob! you wrangler of perfumes, of plain sights and fantasies!
Every time you visit me, I greet you a new person in myself, lost in your fantasies!
You looked toward me, with stern and big beard you glanced my hapless way,
I'm writing for now to report to you that I have caught the glance!
And that through me your glance will diverge into a thousand more glances,
Not stopping for route of yacht or jet, taking only the river and road for ourselves,
Going city to city, packed into the borrowed vans, seeing the clouds outside Louisville and the strawberry bushes leaning up against the barns.
We have seen your poems in the weeds, tangling up the lines.
(Though I never mentioned a word, or made any move to remark upon the signs that you, Old Man, were with us and that loneliness was no limitation.)
Only with my eyes, being all that I know, could I whisper your poems.
I'm running out of breath!--
As everyone runs out of breath now and again,
As now and again our breath rushes back towards us,
Like the hurried sun rushing towards the dwindling afternoon,
Like the hurried sun retreating back from morning!
It is difficult to feel you beneath the narrow cracking sidewalk,
I look for you beneath the bricks and at least you still are soft,
Since the concrete has been laid out for you.
Yet with my harmonica, my fingers, the songs of my thoughts, I sing for you,
And long for you to visit me in the place known neither by those who have come before me, nor all of those who will follow after,
The broad, beating place in the strength of the hold,
The long, light road where in my soul I hold you,
You Whitman I love and go from city to city trailing circles within you.
II.
I left the Paramount on a drift of hunger, wanting of egg, bacon, bagel, cheese, waiting for the ovens to warm and the unlocking of doors,
Hesitating on a cigarette, first against the idea of its usefulness, of its utility, and whether or not I would be any good for that hungering use,
Then after striking a match sharply and swift, hesitated secondly upon the contents of my warped belly, full of hot air and writhing things,
And decided it did no good to wait for things to arrive, possibly moving slowly down from the horizon toward the road, or possibly not moving at all,
Toward myself who decided instead of depending on the strength of ovens or the swiftness of a cigarette, would instead preserve the morning in a balm of sweetness,
Who tapped into the bones of the dirt and the roots of the brick,
Finding you once again where you promised that we would meet,
In the sun that never settles on setting or feels content to rise only forever,
The sun in that moment moving one of us, from fleeting me to you, in the place I for the while of my life will never be content to know.
And while I slept, my stomach was full and my organs were in full song.
And I would need to die before I could forget you.
Whitman, you hearthrob! you wrangler of perfumes, of plain sights and fantasies!
Every time you visit me, I greet you a new person in myself, lost in your fantasies!
You looked toward me, with stern and big beard you glanced my hapless way,
I'm writing for now to report to you that I have caught the glance!
And that through me your glance will diverge into a thousand more glances,
Not stopping for route of yacht or jet, taking only the river and road for ourselves,
Going city to city, packed into the borrowed vans, seeing the clouds outside Louisville and the strawberry bushes leaning up against the barns.
We have seen your poems in the weeds, tangling up the lines.
(Though I never mentioned a word, or made any move to remark upon the signs that you, Old Man, were with us and that loneliness was no limitation.)
Only with my eyes, being all that I know, could I whisper your poems.
I'm running out of breath!--
As everyone runs out of breath now and again,
As now and again our breath rushes back towards us,
Like the hurried sun rushing towards the dwindling afternoon,
Like the hurried sun retreating back from morning!
It is difficult to feel you beneath the narrow cracking sidewalk,
I look for you beneath the bricks and at least you still are soft,
Since the concrete has been laid out for you.
Yet with my harmonica, my fingers, the songs of my thoughts, I sing for you,
And long for you to visit me in the place known neither by those who have come before me, nor all of those who will follow after,
The broad, beating place in the strength of the hold,
The long, light road where in my soul I hold you,
You Whitman I love and go from city to city trailing circles within you.
II.
I left the Paramount on a drift of hunger, wanting of egg, bacon, bagel, cheese, waiting for the ovens to warm and the unlocking of doors,
Hesitating on a cigarette, first against the idea of its usefulness, of its utility, and whether or not I would be any good for that hungering use,
Then after striking a match sharply and swift, hesitated secondly upon the contents of my warped belly, full of hot air and writhing things,
And decided it did no good to wait for things to arrive, possibly moving slowly down from the horizon toward the road, or possibly not moving at all,
Toward myself who decided instead of depending on the strength of ovens or the swiftness of a cigarette, would instead preserve the morning in a balm of sweetness,
Who tapped into the bones of the dirt and the roots of the brick,
Finding you once again where you promised that we would meet,
In the sun that never settles on setting or feels content to rise only forever,
The sun in that moment moving one of us, from fleeting me to you, in the place I for the while of my life will never be content to know.
And while I slept, my stomach was full and my organs were in full song.
And I would need to die before I could forget you.
