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By Gary Corseri
Sunday, Feb 1, 2004
Whitman Recidivist
Walt Whitman can't remember
what he did with America.
It was there in his back pocket
yesterday or the day before:
caroling, brawling, lusty, democratic;
stretching its broadbacked plains
- in the sun between seas.
- He walks from door to door
- selling subscriptions to the Universe.
- Who are these sad-eyed does,
- this tamed race, moping proletariat?
- What are these buildings
- yeasting on the plains,
- that drone of the cities'
- ennui echoing ennui?
- Men on the moon, rockets,
- telethis and telethat-
- but what Vision?--
- all the wires entangling:
- some hydra-headed nullifidian
- sucking the wounds of the eyes,
- eating democracy, spitting it out-
- these people this land
- lost O lost lost.
- Walt Whitman decides to invent
- America anew-
- towering architecture, spires,
- cathedrals of the common man,
- with the fierce light of the free heart bursting,
- spinning the golden spinnakers-
- manly exteriors,
- soft feminine contours inside-
- fit for the forest and prairie,
- taking its proper name from them-
- revealed in the splendor of mountains.
- He needs no Constitution.
- He needs no legal shenanigans.
- Give it back to the Indians who nourished it!
- Give it back to the Blacks who bled for it!
- Give it back to the Mexicanoes
- who owned it first.
- Give it back to the Chinese
- who laid the tracks
- over their dead bodies.
- Unraveling, evolving, manifesting,
- touching the planets and stars,
- white beard pointed jauntily to Orion,
- loins resting languorously
- against the hot flanks of Alpha Centauri-
- Raging, laughing, crying, decrying;
- prodding, urging, discommoding, incanting;
- demonic mandarin, mage, magellanic-
- hurtling humongous challenges again:
- Where is the nation that can contain him?
- Where are the people to sunder their shrines?
-
(First published in Calamus)
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