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FROM pent-up aching rivers, | |
| From that of myself, without which I were nothing, | |
| From what I am determin’d to make illustrious, even if I stand sole among men, | |
| From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus, | |
| Singing the song of procreation. | 5 |
| Singing the need of superb children and therein superb grown people, | |
| Singing the muscular urge and the blending, | |
| Singing the bedfellow’s song, (O resistless yearning! | |
| O for any and each, the body correlative attracting! | |
| O for you, whoever you are, your correlative body! O it, more than all else, you delighting!) | 10 |
| From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day, | |
| From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them, | |
| Seeking something yet unfound though I have diligently sought it many a long year, | |
| Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random, | |
| Singing what, to the Soul, entirely redeemed her, the faithful one even the prostitute, who detained me when I went to the city; | 15 |
| Singing the song of prostitutes; | |
| Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals, | |
| Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing, | |
| Of the smell of apples and lemons, of the pairing of birds, | |
| Of the wet of woods, of the lapping of waves, | 20 |
| Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land, I them chanting, | |
| The overture lightly sounding, the strain anticipating, | |
| The welcome nearness, the sight of the perfect body, | |
| The swimmer swimming naked in the bath, or motionless on his back lying and floating, | |
| The female form approaching, I pensive, love-flesh tremulous, aching, | 25 |
| The divine list for myself, or you or for any one, making, | |
| The face, the limbs, the index from head to foot, and what it arouses, | |
| The mystic deliria, the madness amorous, the utter abandonment, | |
| (Hark close and still what I now whisper to you, | |
| I love you, O you entirely possess me, | 30 |
| O I wish that you and I escape from the rest and go utterly off, free and lawless, | |
| Two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming in the sea, not more lawless than we;) | |
| The furious storm through me careering, I passionately trembling, | |
| The oath of inseparableness of two together, of the woman that loves me and whom I love more than my life, that oath swearing, | |
| (O I willingly stake all for you, | 35 |
| O let me be lost if it must be so! | |
| O you and I! what is it to us what the rest do or think? | |
| What is all else to us? only that we enjoy each other and exhaust each other if it must be so;) | |
| From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to, | |
| The general commanding me, commanding all, from him permission taking, | 40 |
| From time the programme hastening, (I have loiter’d too long as it is,) | |
| From sex, from the warp and from the woof, | |
| (To talk to the perfect girl who understands me, | |
| To waft to her these from my own lips—to effuse them from my own body;) | |
| From privacy, from frequent repinings alone, | 45 |
| From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near, | |
| From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers through my hair and beard, | |
| From the long sustain’d kiss upon the mouth or bosom, | |
| From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk, fainting with excess, | |
| From what the divine husband knows, from the work of fatherhood, | 50 |
| From exultation, victory and relief, from the bedfellow’s embrace in the night, | |
| From the act-poems of eyes, hands, hips and bosoms, | |
| From the cling of the trembling arm, | |
| From the bending curve and the clinch, | |
| From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing, | 55 |
| From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as unwilling to leave, | |
| (Yet a moment O tender waiter, and I return,) | |
| From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews, | |
| From the night a moment I emerging flitting out, | |
| Celebrate you act divine—and you children prepared for, | 60 |
| And you, stalwart loins. | |
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