Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
Gliding o'er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul -- not life alone,
Death, many deaths I'll sing.
crumbled ruins:
once a fine home,
occupants long gone
did their voices
resonate into stone,
trapping something
of their existence:
some subtle indication
that there was life here...
A wise man,
Watching the stars pass across the sky,
Remarked:
In the upper air the fireflies move more slowly.
A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a bar-
room around the stove late of a winter night,
and I unremark'd seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love,
silently approaching and seating himself near,
that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and
going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together,
speaking little, perhaps not a word.
One's-Self I sing, a simple separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-masse.
Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is
worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete
is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing.
Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power,
Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws
divine,
The Modern Man I sing.
What a thing to return from war --
a survivor --
To find that so little has survived:
Not the grass, nor garden,
Not the roof, nor lintels...
The homestead, an overgrown ruin:
Like a remnant of a once great
Civilization that was one's
Peace of mind.
All day I have watched the purple vine leaves
Fall into the water.
And now in the moonlight they still fall,
But each leaf is fringed with silver.
An overexposed photo
feels like it's from ages
ago --
decades past.
But it's from just the other day.
When I was there in person,
opening that shutter,
it didn't feel like the 90's,
but something about that photo
ages it...
and ages me.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 