Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through
me the current
and index.
I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of
democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot
have their
counterpart of on the same
terms.
Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners
and slaves,
Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of
thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of
wombs and of the
father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform’d, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and
I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d.
I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the
head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part
and tag of me
is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever
I touch or am
touch’d from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the
creeds.
If I worship one thing more than another it shall
be the spread of
my own body, or any part of
it,
Translucent mould of me it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter it shall be you!
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you!
You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings
of my life!
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall
be you!
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions!
Root of wash’d sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe!
nest of guarded
duplicate eggs! it shall be
you!
Mix’d tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it
shall be you!
Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall
be you!
Sun so generous it shall be you!
Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you!
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you!
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me
it shall be you!
Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving
lounger in my
winding paths, it shall be
you!
Hands I have taken, face I have kiss’d, mortal
I have ever touch’d,
it shall be you.
I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all
so luscious,
Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy,
I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause
of my faintest wish,
Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause
of the
friendship I take again.
That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it
really be,
A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than
the metaphysics
of books.