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<div class="poem">
<p>The stars have grooved our eyes with old persuasions<br />
Of love and hatred, birth,—surcease of nations...<br />
But who has held the heights more sure than thou,<br />
O Walt!—Ascensions of thee hover in me now<br />
As thou at junctions elegiac, there, of speed<br />
With vast eternity, dost wield the rebound seed!<br />
The competent loam, the probable grass,—travail<br />
Of tides awash the pedestal of Everest, fail<br />
Not less than thou in pure impulse inbred<br />
To answer deepest soundings! O, upward from the dead<br />
Thou bringest tally, and a pact, new bound,<br />
Of living brotherhood!
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<div class="poem">
<p>The nasal whine of power whips a new universe...<br />
Where spouting pillars spoor the evening sky,<br />
Under the looming stacks of the gigantic power house<br />
Stars prick the eyes with sharp ammoniac proverbs,<br />
New verities, new inklings in the velvet hummed<br />
Of dynamos, where hearing's leash is strummed...<br />
Power's script,—wound, bobbin-bound, refined—<br />
Is stropped to the slap of belts on booming spools, spurred<br />
Into the bulging bouillon, harnessed jelly of the stars.<br />
Towards what? The forked crash of split thunder parts<br />
Our hearing momentwise; but fast in whirling armatures,<br />
As bright as frogs' eyes, giggling in the girth<br />
Of steely gizzards—axle-bound, confined<br />
In coiled precision, bunched in mutual glee<br />
The bearings glint,—O murmurless and shined<br />
In oilrinsed circles of blind ecstasy!
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<div class="poem">
<p>To that deep wonderment, our native clay<br />
Whose depth of red, eternal flesh of Pocahontus—<br />
Those continental folded aeons, surcharged<br />
With sweetness below derricks, chimneys, tunnels—<br />
Is veined by all that time has really pledged us...<br />
And from above, thin squeaks of radio static,<br />
The captured fume of space foams in our ears—<br />
What whisperings of far watches on the main<br />
Relapsing into silence, while time clears<br />
Our lenses, lifts a focus, resurrects<br />
A periscope to glimpse what joys or pain<br />
Our eyes can share or answer—then deflects<br />
Us, shunting to a labyrinth submersed<br />
Where each sees only his dim past reversed...
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<div class="poem">
<p>Years of the Modern! Propulsions toward what capes?<br />
But thou, <i>Panis Angelicus,</i> hast thou not seen<br />
And passed that Barrier that none escapes—<br />
But knows it leastwise as death-strife?—O, something green,<br />
Beyond all sesames of science was thy choice<br />
Wherewith to bind us throbbing with one voice,<br />
New integers of Roman, Viking, Celt—<br />
Thou, Vedic Caesar, to the greensward knelt!
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<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 11em;"> Low, shadowed of the Cape,</span><br />
Regard the moving turrets! From grey decks<br />
See scouting griffons rise through gaseous crepe<br />
Hung low... until a conch of thunder answers<br />
Cloud-belfries, banging, while searchlights, like fencers,<br />
Slit the sky's pancreas of foaming anthracite<br />
Toward thee, O Corsair of the typhoon,—pilot, hear!<br />
Thine eyes bicarbonated white by speed, O Skygak, see<br />
How from thy path above the levin's lance<br />
Thou sowest doom thou hast nor time nor chance<br />
To reckon—as thy stilly eyes partake<br />
What alcohol of space...! Remember, Falcon-Ace,<br />
Thou hast there in thy wrist a Sanskrit charge<br />
To conjugate infinity's dim marge—<br />
Anew...!
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<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 15em;"><i>The seas all crossed,</i></span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 7em;"><i>weathered the capes, the voyage done...</i></span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 15em;"><i>—WALT WHITMAN</i></span>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Behold the dragon's covey—amphibian, ubiquitous<br />
To hedge the seaboard, wrap the headland, ride<br />
The blue's cloud-templed districts unto ether...<br />
While Iliads glimmer through eyes raised in pride<br />
Hell's belt springs wider into heaven's plumed side.<br />
O bright circumferences, heights employed to fly<br />
War's fiery kennel masked in downy offings,—<br />
This tournament of space, the threshed and chiselled height,<br />
Is baited by marauding circles, bludgeon flail<br />
Of rancorous grenades whose screaming petals carve us<br />
Wounds that we wrap with theorems sharp as hail!
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<div class="poem">
<p>And see! the rainbow's arch—how shimmeringly stands<br />
Above the Cape's ghoul-mound, O joyous seer!<br />
Recorders ages hence, yes, they shall hear<br />
In their own veins uncancelled thy sure tread<br />
And read thee by the aureole 'round thy head<br />
Of pasture-shine, <i>Panis Angelicus!</i><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 19em;"> Yes, Walt,</span><br />
Afoot again, and onward without halt,—<br />
Not soon, nor suddenly,—No, never to let go<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 2em;"> My hand</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 6em;"> in yours,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;"> Walt Whitman—</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 18em;"> so—</span>
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<div class="poem">
<p>"—Recorders ages hence"—ah, syllables of faith!<br />
Walt, tell me, Walt Whitman, if infinity<br />
Be still the same as when you walked the beach<br />
Near Paumanok—your lone patrol—and heard the wraith<br />
Through surf, its bird note there a long time falling...<br />
For you, the panoramas and this breed of towers,<br />
Of you—the theme that's statured in the cliff,<br />
O Saunterer on free ways still ahead!<br />
Not this our empire yet, but labyrinth<br />
Wherein your eyes, like the Great Navigator's without ship,<br />
Gleam from the great stones of each prison crypt<br />
Of canyoned traffic... Confronting the Exchange,<br />
Surviving in a world of stocks,—they also range<br />
Across the hills where second timber strays<br />
Back over Connecticut farms, abandoned pastures,—<br />
Sea eyes and tidal, undenying, bright with myth!
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<div class="poem">
<p>Imponderable the dinosaur<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 9em;"> sinks slow,</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 11em;"> the mammoth saurian</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 13em;"> ghoul, the eastern</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 20em;"> Cape..</span>
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<div class="poem">
<p>And now, as launched in abysmal cupolas of space,<br />
Toward endless terminals, Easters of speeding light—<br />
Vast engines outward veering with seraphic grace<br />
On clarion cylinders pass out of sight<br />
To course that span of consciousness thou'st named<br />
The Open Road—thy vision is reclaimed!<br />
What heritage thou'st signalled to our hands!
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>While rises in the west the coastwise range,<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 12em;"> slowly the hushed land—</span><br />
Combustion at the astral core—the dorsal change<br />
Of energy—convulsive shift of sand...<br />
But we, who round the capes, the promontories<br />
Where strange tongues vary messages of surf<br />
Below grey citadels, repeating to the stars<br />
The ancient names—return home to our own<br />
Hearths, there to eat an apple and recall<br />
The songs that gypsies dealt us at Marseille<br />
Or how the priests walked—slowly through Bombay—<br />
Or to read you, Walt,—knowing us in thrall
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<div class="poem">
<p>Cowslip and shad-blow, flaked like tethered foam<br />
Around bared teeth of stallions, bloomed that spring<br />
When first I read thy lines, rife as the loam<br />
Of prairies, yet like breakers cliffward leaping!<br />
O, early following thee, I searched the hill<br />
Blue-writ and odor-firm with violets, 'til<br />
With June the mountain laurel broke through green<br />
And filled the forest with what clustrous sheen!<br />
Potomac lilies, — then the Pontiac rose,<br />
And Klondike edelweiss of occult snows!<br />
White banks of moonlight came descending valleys—<br />
How speechful on oak-vizored palisades,<br />
As vibrantly I following down Sequoia alleys<br />
Heard thunder's eloquence through green arcades<br />
Set trumpets breathing in each clump and grass tuft—'til<br />
Gold autumn, captured, crowned the trembling hill!
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<div class="poem">
<p><i>Panis Angelicus!</i> Eyes tranquil with the blaze<br />
Of love's own diametric gaze, of love's amaze!<br />
Not greatest, thou,—not first, nor last,—but near<br />
And onward yielding past my utmost year.<br />
Familiar, thou, as mendicants in public places;<br />
Evasive—too—as dayspring's spreading arc to trace is:—<br />
Our Meistersinger, thou set breath in steel;<br />
And it was thou who on the boldest heel<br />
Stood up and flung the span on even wing<br />
Of that great Bridge, our Myth, whereof I sing!
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<div class="poem">
<p>But that star-glistered salver of infinity,<br />
The circle, blind crucible of endless space,<br />
Is sliced by motion,—subjugated never.<br />
Adam and Adam's answer in the forest<br />
Left Hesperus mirrored in the lucid pool.<br />
Now the eagle dominates our days, is jurist<br />
Of the ambiguous cloud. We know the strident rule<br />
Of wings imperious... Space, instantaneous,<br />
Flickers a moment, consumes us in its smile:<br />
A flash over the horizon—shifting gears—<br />
And we have laughter, or more sudden tears.<br />
Dream cancels dream in this new realm of fact<br />
From which we wake into the dream of act;<br />
Seeing himself an atom in a shroud—<br />
Man hears himself an engine in a cloud!
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<div class="poem">
<p><span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;"> But first, here at this height receive</span><br />
The benediction of the shell's deep, sure reprieve!<br />
Lead-perforated fuselage, escutcheoned wings<br />
Lift agonized quittance, tilting from the invisible brink<br />
Now eagle-bright, now<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 10em;"> quarry-hid, twist-</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 18em;"> -ing, sink with</span><br />
Enormous repercussive list-<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 12em;"> -ings down</span><br />
Giddily spiralled<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 7em;"> gauntlets, upturned, unlooping</span><br />
In guerrilla sleights, trapped in combustion gyr-<br />
Ing, dance the curdled depth<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 13em;"> down whizzing</span><br />
Zodiacs, dashed<br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 7em;"> (now nearing fast the Cape!)</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 15em;"> down gravitation's</span><br />
<span class="mw-poem-indented" style="display: inline-block; margin-inline-start: 17em;"> vortex into crashed</span><br />
...dispersion...into mashed and shapeless débris....<br />
By Hatteras bunched the beached heap of high bravery!
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<div class="poem">
<p>Stars scribble on our eyes the frosty sagas,<br />
The gleaming cantos of unvanquished space...<br />
O sinewy silver biplane, nudging the wind's withers!<br />
There, from Kill Devils Hill at Kitty Hawk<br />
Two brothers in their twinship left the dune;<br />
Warping the gale, the Wright windwrestlers veered<br />
Capeward, then blading the wind's flank, banked and spun<br />
What ciphers risen from prophetic script,<br />
What marathons new-set between the stars!<br />
The soul, by naphtha fledged into new reaches<br />
Already knows the closer clasp of Mars,—<br />
New latitudes, unknotting, soon give place<br />
To what fierce schedules, rife of doom apace!
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<div class="poem">
<p>Wheeled swiftly, wings emerge from larval-silver hangars.<br />
Taut motors surge, space-gnawing, into flight;<br />
Through sparkling visibility, outspread, unsleeping,<br />
Wings clip the last peripheries of light...<br />
Tellurian wind-sleuths on dawn patrol,<br />
Each plane a hurtling javelin of winged ordnance,<br />
Bristle the heights above a screeching gale to hover;<br />
Surely no eye that Sunward Escadrille can cover!<br />
There, meaningful, fledged as the Pleiades<br />
With razor sheen they zoom each rapid helix!<br />
Up-chartered choristers of their own speeding<br />
They, cavalcade on escapade, shear Cumulus—<br />
Lay siege and hurdle Cirrus down the skies!<br />
While Cetus-like, O thou Dirigible, enormous Lounger<br />
Of pendulous auroral beaches,—satellited wide<br />
By convoy planes, moonferrets that rejoin thee<br />
On fleeing balconies as thou dost glide,<br />
—Hast splintered space!
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>Or can’t you quite make up your mind to ride;<br />
A walk is better underneath the L a brisk<br />
Ten blocks or so before? But you find yourself<br />
Preparing penguin flexions of the arms,—<br />
As usual you will meet the scuttle yawn:<br />
The subway yawns the quickest promise home.
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<div class="poem">
<p>Be minimum, then, to swim the hiving swarms<br />
Out of the Square, the Circle burning bright—<br />
Avoid the glass doors gyring at your right,<br />
Where boxed alone a second, eyes take fright<br />
—Quite unprepared rush naked back to light:<br />
And down beside the turnstile press the coin<br />
Into the slot. The gongs already rattle.
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