Camerado!  This is no book;

Who touches this, touches a man. . .

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

 

Man and Book

 

As man and book, he reads us in himself, each page a leaf of grass from Nature’s book,

that sacred green and red and yellow text revealed to him by Emerson, who raised

Walt’s simmer to a boil and great career. His grass matures to snowy beard throughout

the singing of himself, as book and body cycle toward his immortality—

along the way becoming slave and Brave, whore and bride, Satan and the Savior,

warriors Blue and Gray, a yawping hawk and mourning dove: Identities of love,

these leaves enlighten even darkest times. His selfless self forever rhymes with us.