THE WHITMAN ISSUE

David Bergman

..........................THE PETER DOYLE POEMS

........................................................I
.....................The Romance of America Demands the Story

.............of how you came to meet.
It was raining, so we understand, and night
.............or early morning
and at the end of the route, you, Peter, walked
.............back smiling to your only fare,
the horses silent for a second, undisturbed, to lay
.............your hand across the stranger’s thigh
and he, smiling, pulled his legs still further apart.

.............A sign of how you understood
each other from the first. Still you were the one,
.............desperate, horny, boyishly innocent,
who felt safe to make the first move.
.............Why not? Twice an exile at eighteen
(from Ireland and the Confederacy)
.............a discharged soldier in the enemy’s capital,
you had nothing to lose, having discharged
.............everything, yet ready
to lay down your body for an explosive union
.............of which Lincoln could only dream:
a congress of affection, a senate of celebrants
.............upholding the rites of love.

.............Our readers wish to know
where you learned your technique. Was it
.............in the Spartan Armies of the South?
Or in the easy fellowship of the city’s barrooms?
.............Neither. You watched the waters
of the Potomac rush mindless to the sea.
.............The ribbed waters swallow the foam
of rapids, the rapids penetrating the passive basins.
.............And this gave you an idea
not of generation, but of eternal delight.

.............Later the trolley rocked
on its tracks in waves both mechanical and fluid.

........................................................II.
...............................................Peter Speaks

Some of the young
men I take to bed
ask me about Walt.
They want to know
about the size of the man.
I tell them of continents,
volcanoes
and oceanic spune.
And they laugh or grin,
shake their heads in disbelief.
But you can see
that they’re aroused
when we return to our play.
Somehow they understand
that after he touched me
I had never to speak
in metaphor again.

........................................................III.
.....................................Peter Doyle to the Scholar

..........................................................."Walt often spoke to me of his books.
...........................................................I would tell him, ‘I don’t know what you’re
...........................................................Trying to get at.’"

Lately I’ve been thinking
was it a waste for him
to have chose me to love?
I’m no wise or well-read man,
and there was a lot in him
I simply ignored because
it didn’t mean much to me.
His manuscripts, for one thing.
I lost them when we moved,
or they were stolen
by a thoughtful admirer.

But then there’s this raglan
Walt gave me. Said
would keep me warm. It does.
But like everything he wore
it’s all stretched out into his own shape,
and so frayed at the edges and so matted
under the arms that a well-dressed man
like yourself might have thrown it away.
But this was a gift even I could understand.
I put it on at night as I had his body.
Take in its warmth as I took him in,
fluid, bone and all. I ask you,
could you have done this:
Put his flesh in hand, magnified it
till you both were rocked with joy?

........................................................IV.
...............................................A Love Poem

To be American is to be queer!

That’s what you taught us Walt Whitman,
sponging down the soldiers,
carrying chamber pots through the wards
or swimming in the crooked streams
so cold your balls froze beneath your belly.
Or waiting at the crack of dawn
for the sounds of the ferryman
above the bullfrogs and the crickets.

Today I returned to a spot
where something tragic happened once,
something glorious and terrible and queer–
the place where John Brown struck to free the slaves,
their jet skins more precious than any gem.
But no one pays attention anymore.
The young stroll arm in arm,
knowing in their smiles, swaggering like long corn.

Oh, Walt, how many months I’ve waited for a poem
I could give my love, but you
gave it to him long ago:
at night, soaked in the dew of the country
we swim for you, down its rivers to its mouth
and crawl to the shore amphibians.

All your countrymen are queer.

David Bergman is the author or editor of over a dozen books. His latest volume of poetry is Heroic Measures (Ohio State, 1998). His latest book of criticism is The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill and the Making of Gay Culture (Columbia, 2004). He teaches at Towson University.