Ode to Walt Whitman

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Ode to Walt Whitman

Along the East River and in the Bronx

young men were singing, showing off their waists.

With the wheel, the oil, the leather, and the hammer,

ninety thousand miners extracted the silver from rocks,

and little boys were drawing stairs and perspectives.

But not one would sleep,

not one wished to be a river,

not one loved the great leaves,

not one, the blue tongue of the beach.

Along the East River and on the Queensborough

young men wrestled with industry,

and Jews were selling the rose of circumcision

to the faun of the river,

and the sky emptied out onto bridges and roofs

herds of bison pushed along by the winds.

But not one would ever pause,

not one wished to be a cloud,

not one seached for the fern

or the yellow wheel of the tambour.

When the moon comes out,

the pulleys will turn to disturb the skies;

a boundary of needles will enclose the memory,

and coffins will carry away those who never work.

New York, of muck,

New York of wire and of death:

What angel is carried hidden in your cheek?

What perfect voice will speak the truths of the wheat?

Who, that terrible dream of your stained windflowers?

Not for one single moment, beautiful old Walt Whitman,

have I ever ceased seeing your beard full of butterflies,

or your corduroy shoulders worn thin by the moonlight,

or your thighs of a virginal Apollo,

or your voice just like a column of ash,

aged one, as beautiful as the mists,

who wailed the same as a bird

with its sex pierced by a needle.

Enemy of the satyr,

Enemy of the vine,

and lover of bodies beneath coarse cloth.

Not for one single moment, my virile beauty,

for on mountains of coal, on signs and on railroads,

you dreamed of being a river and sleeping like a river

next to that comrade who placed in your breast

the tiny hurts of nescient leopards.

Not for one single moment, Adam-blooded one, All-Male,

man alone upon the seas, beautiful old Walt Whitman,

because on rooftop terraces,

huddled together in bars,

running out of the sewers in bunches,

trembling between the legs of chauffeurs,

or flitting about on the platforms of absinthe,

the faggots, Walt Whitman, are pointing at you.

That one, too! Him, too! And hurling themselves

down upon your luminous and chaste beard

are blonds of the north, Negroes of the sands;

a multitude of shrieks and gestures,

just like cats and just like snakes,

are the faggots, Walt Whitman, the faggots,

blurry-eyed with tears, flesh for the whip,

or the boot or the bite of animal trainers.

That one, too! Him, too! Tinted fingers

are leveled at the shores of your dream

when that friend eats from your apple

with its slight taste of gasoline

and sunlight sings upon the navels

of the boys playing beneath the bridges.

But you never sought out scratched eyes

or the darkest swamps where they submerge little boys,

or that frozen saliva,

or those wounded curves like toads' bellies

that faggots lug about in cars and on terraces

while the moonlight lashes them on the street corners of terror.

You only sought a nude who would be like a river.

A bull and a dream that would join wheel and seaweed,

a sire of your mortal agony, a camellia of your death,

and he would wail in the flames of your hidden Equator.

Because it's not right for a man to seek his delight

in those blood jungles of the morning after.

The skies have shores where one can avoid life,

and some bodies should never be repeated in the Dawn.

Agony, mortal agony, dream, ferment and dream.

That's the world, friend: agony, mortal agony.

The dead are decomposing beneath the clocks of the cities.

The war passes by us, weeping, with a million grey rats,

rich men give to their mistresses

tiny, illuminated half-corpses,

and Life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred.

A man can, if he wishes, guide his desire

over a vein of coral or a celestial nude;

tomorrow loves will become rocks, and Time,

a breeze coming through the branches fast asleep.

That's why I never raise my voice, old Walt Whitman,

against the little boy who inscribes

a little girl's name deep into his pillow,

nor against the young man who dresses up as a bride

in the darkness of his clothes closet,

nor against those lonesome men of the casinos,

who drink with disgust from the waters of prostitution,

nor against those men with lecherous gazes,

who love men, but whose lips burn in silence.

But decidedly against you, faggots of the cities,

with your tumescent flesh and vile thoughts.

Mothers of filth. Harpies. Unsleeping enemies

of the Love that bestows crowns of joy.

Forever against you, who give to all those young men,

drop by drop, the bitter venom of a foul death.

Forever against you,

Fairies of North America,

Pájaros of Havana,

Jotos of Mexico,

Sarasas of Cádiz,

Apios of Seville,

Cancos of Madrid,

Floras of Alicante,

Adelaidas of Portugal.

Faggots of the whole world, murderers of doves!

Slaves of women. Bitches of their boudoirs.

Openly in plazas, with a fever of fans,

or lying in ambush in the rigid landscapes of hemlock.

No quarter'll be given! Death

oozes from your eyes

and arranges crimson flowers on the shores of the muck.

No quarter'll be given! Watch out!!

May the confused ones, the pure ones,

the classical ones, distinguished ones, imploring ones,

slam the gates of the bacchanal in your faces.

And you, beautiful Walt Whitman, sleep now next

to the Hudson.

with your beard towards the Pole and your hands open wide.

In soft clay or in the snow, your tongue calls calls out to

those comrades keeping vigil over your bodiless gazelle.

Sleep now, nothing at all is left.

A dance of walls now shakes the meadows,

and America is inundated with machines and tears.

I wish the strong winds of that deepest of nights

would rip flower and letter from the arch where you sleep,

and that a black boy might announce to the whites of gold

the coming reign of the wheat.

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