Walt Whitman

It is dark here underground .... it is not evil or pain here .... it is black here, for reasons.

A shroud I see – and I am the shroud .... I wrap a body and lie in the coffin;

I see the sparkles of starshine on the icy and pallid earth.

It is I too .... the sleepless widow looking out on the winter midnight,

I sit low in a strawbottom chair and carefully darn my grandson’s stockings.

It is my face yellow and wrinkled instead of the old woman’s,

Perfume and youth course through me, and I am their wake.

I descend my western course .... my sinews are flaccid,

And liquor is spilled on lips and bosoms by touching glasses, and the best liquor afterward.

The white teeth stay, and the boss-tooth advances in darkness,

Laps life-swelling yolks .... laps car of rose-corn, milky and just ripened:

The cloth laps a first sweet eating and drinking,

And am curious to know where my feet stand .... and what is this flooding me, childhood or manhood .... and the hunger that crosses the bridge between.

I feel ashamed to go naked about the world,

Pier out from the main, let me catch myself with you and stay .... I will not chafe you;

Pier that I saw dimly last night when I looked from the windows,

Now I am thrust forth, where shall I run?

O for pity’s sake, no one must see me now! .... my clothes were stolen while I was abed,

O hotcheeked and blushing! O foolish hectic!

I hear the heart-beat .... I follow .. I fade away.

I thought my lover had gone .... else darkness and he are one,

Be careful, darkness .... already, what was it touched me?

I would sound up the shadowy shore to which you are journeying.

My hands are spread forth .. I pass them in all directions,

I feel the hot moisture yet that he left me.

Darkness you are gentler than my lover .... his flesh was sweaty and panting,

He rises with me silently from the bed.

He whom I call answers me and takes the place of my lover,

I roll myself upon you as upon a bed .... I resign myself to the dusk.

Receive me and my lover too .... he will not let me go without him.