497 Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
498 Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
499 No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from them,
500 No more modest than immodest.
501 Unscrew the locks from the doors!
502 Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
503 Whoever degrades another degrades me,
504 And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.
505 Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index.
506 I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
507 By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.
508 Through me many long dumb voices,
509 Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
510 Voices of the diseas’d and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
511 Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
512 And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of the father-stuff,
513 And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
514 Of the deform’d, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
515 Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.
516 Through me forbidden voices,
517 Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil’d and I remove the veil,
518 Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur’d.
519 I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
520 I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
521 Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.
522 I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
523 Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
524 Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from,
525 The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
526 This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
527 If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of my own body, or any part of it,
528 Translucent mould of me it shall be you!
529 Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you!
530 Firm masculine colter it shall be you!
531 Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you!
532 You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life!
533 Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you!
534 My brain it shall be your occult convolutions!
535 Root of wash’d sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded duplicate eggs! it shall be you!
536 Mix’d tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you!
537 Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you!
538 Sun so generous it shall be you!
539 Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you!
540 You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you!
541 Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you!
542 Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you!
543 Hands I have taken, face I have kiss’d, mortal I have ever touch’d, it shall be you.
544 I dote on myself, there is that lot of me and all so luscious,
545 Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy,
546 I cannot tell how my ankles bend, nor whence the cause of my faintest wish,
547 Nor the cause of the friendship I emit, nor the cause of the friendship I take again.
548 That I walk up my stoop, I pause to consider if it really be,
549 A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
550 To behold the day-break!
551 The little light fades the immense and diaphanous shadows,
552 The air tastes good to my palate.
553 Hefts of the moving world at innocent gambols silently rising, freshly exuding,
554 Scooting obliquely high and low.
555 Something I cannot see puts upward libidinous prongs,
556 Seas of bright juice suffuse the heavens.
557 The earth by the sky staid with, the daily close of their junction,
558 The heav’d challenge from the east that moment over my head,
559 The mocking taunt, See then whether you shall be master!
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