Hi there,
I'm John.
Welcome to this bedtime reading.
I'm very happy that you've chosen to spend this time with me.
Whether we're an adult or a child,
Being read to is one of the most lovely things we can do for each other.
Tonight,
I'm going to be reading to you some excerpts from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass,
Which is considered to be one of the greatest pieces of literature and spiritual poetry that there is.
But before we begin,
Let's just settle down into the bed.
Become present.
Just know where you are.
Allow yourself to feel your breath at your abdomen.
And you can feel the mattress beneath you,
The quilt over you,
Or the blanket,
Your feet,
Your legs,
Your belly,
Your torso,
Your head against the pillow,
Your whole body.
Just being here.
Wonderful.
Let's begin.
Introduction This is what you shall do.
Love the earth and sun and the animals.
Despise riches.
Give arms to everyone that asks.
Stand up for the stupid and crazy.
Devote your income and labor to others.
Hate tyrants.
Argue not concerning God.
Have patience and indulgence toward the people.
Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men.
Go freely with powerful,
Uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families.
Read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life.
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book.
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.
And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
And have the richest fluency,
Not only in its words,
But in the silent lines of its lips and face.
And between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
Selections from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.
I celebrate myself and what I assume you shall assume.
For every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul.
I lean and loaf at my ease.
Observing a spear of summer grass.
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes.
Their shells are crowded with perfumes.
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it.
The distillation would intoxicate me also,
But I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume.
It has no taste of the distillation.
It is odorless.
It is in my mouth forever.
I am in love with it.
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked.
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath.
Echoes,
Ripples and buzzed whispers.
Love root,
Silk thread,
Crotch and vine.
My respiration and inspiration.
The beating of my heart.
The passing of blood and air through my lungs.
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves.
And of the shore and dark colored sea rocks.
And of hay in the barn.
The sound of the belch words of my voice.
Words loosed to the eddies of the wind.
A few light kisses.
A few embraces.
A reaching around of arms.
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag.
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets or along the fields and hillsides.
The feeling of health.
The full noon trail.
The song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.
Have you reckoned a thousand acres much?
Have you reckoned the earth much?
Have you practiced so long to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.
There are millions of suns left.
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand nor look through the eyes of the dead.
Nor feed on the spectres in books.
You shall not look through my eyes either.
Nor take things from me.
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.
I have heard what the talkers were talking.
The talk of the beginning and the end.
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There is never more any inception than there is now.
Nor any more youth or age than there is now.
I will never be any more perfection than there is now.
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge.
Always the procreate urge of the world.
Out of the dimness,
Opposite equals advance.
Always substance and increase.
Always a knit of identity.
Always distinction.
Always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail.
Learned and unlearned feel that it is so.
Sure as the most certain sure.
Plum in the uprights.
Well entreated.
Braced in the beams.
Stout as a horse.
Affectionate.
Horty.
Electrical.
I and this mystery,
Here we stand.
Clear as my soul.
And clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.
Lacks one,
Lacks both.
And the unseen is proved by the seen.
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst.
Age affects his age.
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things.
While they discuss,
I am silent.
And go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me.
And of any man,
Hearty and clean.
Not an inch,
Nor a particle of an inch is vile.
And none shall be less familiar than the rest.
I am satisfied.
I see,
Dance,
Laugh,
Sing.
As God comes a loving bedfellow.
And sleeps at my side all night.
And clothes on the peep of day.
And leaves for me baskets covered with white towels.
Bulging the house with their plenty.
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization.
And scream at my eyes.
That they turn from gazing after and down the road.
And forthwith cipher and show me to assent.
Exactly the contents of one.
And exactly the contents of two.
And which is ahead.
Trippers and askers surround me.
People I meet.
The effect upon me of my early life.
Of the ward and city I live in.
Of the nation.
The latest news.
Discoveries.
Inventions.
Societies.
Authors old and new.
My dinner.
Dress.
Associates.
Looks.
Business.
Compliments.
Dues.
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love.
The sickness of one of my folks.
Or of myself.
Or ill doing.
Or loss.
Or lack of money.
Or depressions.
Or exaltations.
They come to me days and nights.
And go from me again.
But they are not the me,
Myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling.
Stands what I am.
Stands amused.
Complacent.
Compassionating.
Idle.
Unitary.
Looks down.
Is erect.
Bends an arm on an implacable certain rest.
Looks with its side curved head.
Curious what will come next.
Both in and out of the game.
And watching and wondering at it.
Backward.
I see my own days.
Where I sweated through fog with linguists and contenders.
I have no mockings or arguments.
I witness and wait.
I believe in you my soul.
The other I am must not abase itself to you.
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loaf with me on the grass.
Loose the stop from your throat.
Not words.
Not music.
Or rhyme I want.
Nor custom.
Or lecture.
Not even the best.
Only the lull I like.
The hum of your valved voice.
And I know.
The hand of God.
Is the elder hand of my own.
And I know that the spirit of God.
Is the eldest brother of my own.
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers.
And the women,
My sisters and lovers.
And that a chelsen of the creation is love.
And limitless are leaves,
Stiff or drooping in the fields.
Brown ants in the little wells beneath them.
Mossy scabs of the worm fence.
And heaped stones.
And elder.
And mullin.
And pokeweed.
A child said,
What is the grass?
Fetching it to me with full hands.
How could I answer the child?
I do not know what it is any more than he.
This it must be the flag of my disposition.
Out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord.
A scented gift and remembrance are designedly dropped.
Bearing the owner's name some way in the corners.
That we may see and remark and say who's.
Or I guess the grass itself is a child.
The produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic.
And it means sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones.
Growing among black folk as among white.
Canuck took a whole.
Congressman cuff.
I give them the same.
I receive the same.
I exist as I am.
That is enough.
If no other in the world be aware,
I sit content.
And if each and all be aware,
I sit content.
One world is aware.
And by far the largest to me.
And that is myself.
And whether I come to my own today.
Or in ten thousand.
Or ten million years.
I can cheerfully take it now.
Or with equal cheerfulness.
I can wait.
I am the poet of the body.
And I am the poet of the soul.
The pleasures of heaven are with me.
The pains of hell are with me.
The first I graft and increase upon myself.
The latter I translate into a new tongue.
I am the poet of the woman.
The same as the man.
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man.
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
I chant a new chant of dilation or pride.
I am he that walks with a tender and growing night.
I call to the earth and the sea half held by the night.
Smile over luxurious cool breathed earth.
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees.
Earth of departed sunset.
Earth of the mountains misty topped.
Earth of the vitreous pore of the full moon just tinged with blue.
Earth of shine and dark mottling.
The tide of the river.
Earth of the limpet grey of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake.
Far swooping elbowed earth.
Rich apple blossomed earth.
Smile for your lover comes.
The facts are useful and real.
They are not my dwelling.
I enter by them to an area of the dwelling.
I am less the reminder of property or qualities and more the reminder of life.
There is that in me.
I do not know what it is.
But I know it is in me.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then.
I contradict myself.
I am large.
I contain multitudes.
Thank you for spending this time with me.
Good night.
Sleep well.
