Walt Whitman

LEAVES OF GRASS
(1891-92 issue)
complete book, e-book

Nové Literární doupě!

Literární doupě bylo modernizováno a přechází pod novou doménu literdo.com!.

Nový web LD vám přínáší ještě více knih s možností výhodného stahování většího množství e-knih podle vlastního výběru (tedy nejen jednotlivých knih nebo balíčků podle autorů) ve formátech ePub , PDF  a MOBI.

 Přejít na nový web Literární doupě

 

BOOK XVI

A Song of the Rolling Earth

1

 A song of the rolling earth, and of words according,
 Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines?
 those curves, angles, dots?
 No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground
 and sea,
 They are in the air, they are in you.
 
 Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds
 out of your friends' mouths?
 No, the real words are more delicious than they.
 
 Human bodies are words, myriads of words,
 (In the best poems re-appears the body, man's or woman's,
 well-shaped, natural, gay,
 Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.)
 
 Air, soil, water, fire--those are words,
 I myself am a word with them--my qualities interpenetrate with
 theirs--my name is nothing to them,
 Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would
 air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?
 
 A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words,
 sayings, meanings,
 The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women,
 are sayings and meanings also.
 
 The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the earth,
 The masters know the earth's words and use them more than audible words.
 
 Amelioration is one of the earth's words,
 The earth neither lags nor hastens,
 It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump,
 It is not half beautiful only, defects and excrescences show just as
 much as perfections show.
 
 The earth does not withhold, it is generous enough,
 The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so conceal'd either,
 They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print,
 They are imbued through all things conveying themselves willingly,
 Conveying a sentiment and invitation, I utter and utter,
 I speak not, yet if you hear me not of what avail am I to you?
 To bear, to better, lacking these of what avail am I?
 
 (Accouche! accouchez!
 Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there?
 Will you squat and stifle there?)
 
 The earth does not argue,
 Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
 Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
 Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
 Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out,
 Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.
 
 The earth does not exhibit itself nor refuse to exhibit itself,
 (...)
(......)