From Pent-up Aching Rivers
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,
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;
Singing 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 redeem'd her, the faithful one,
even the prostitute, who detain'd me when I went to the city;
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;
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--O
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 the 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!
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:)
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poem by Walt Whitman
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