fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007 - Ethical Culture ...

956 My face is ash-color’d, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.957 Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,958 I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.38959 Enough! enough! enough!960 Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back!961 Give me a little time beyond my cuff’d head, slumbers, dreams, gaping,962 I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.963 That I could forget the mockers and insults!964 That I could forget the trickling tears and the blows of the bludgeons and hammers!965 That I could look with a separate look on my own crucifixion and bloody crowning.966 I remember now,967 I resume the overstaid fraction,968 The grave of rock multiplies what has been confided to it, or to any graves,969 Corpses rise, gashes heal, fastenings roll from me.970 I troop forth replenish’d with supreme power, one of an average unending procession,971 Inland and sea-coast we go, and pass all boundary lines,972 Our swift ordinances on their way over the whole earth,973 The blossoms we wear in our hats the growth of thousands of years.974 Eleves, I salute you! come forward!975 Continue your annotations, continue your questionings.39976 The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?977 Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?978 Is he some Southwesterner rais’d out-doors? is he Kanadian?979 Is he from the Mississippi country? Iowa, Oregon, California?980 The mountains? prairie-life, bush-life? or sailor from the sea?981 Wherever he goes men and women accept and desire him,982 They desire he should like them, touch them, speak to them, stay with them.983 Behavior lawless as snow-flakes, words simple as grass, uncomb’d head, laughter, and naivetè,984 Slow-stepping feet, common features, common modes and emanations,985 They descend in new forms from the tips of his fingers,986 They are wafted with the odor of his body or breath, they fly out of the glance of his eyes.40987 Flaunt of the sunshine I need not your bask -- lie over!988 You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.989 Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,990 Say, old top-knot, what do you want?991 Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,992 And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,993 And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.994 Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,995 When I give I give myself.996 You there, impotent, loose in the knees,997 Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you,998 Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,999 I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare,1000 And any thing I have I bestow.162 fieldston american reader volume i – fall 2007