THE WHITMAN ISSUE

Ron Goudreau

WHITMAN READING

He arches over the page trying to absorb the words,
his white wool beard quivering
so that the butterflies become alert.
But the words contend with his own troubled thoughts:
..........Who would love an old man?
..........How do I express universal love?
..........Is that death at my shoulder?
..........Will I be remembered?
Then, turning, looking out the window
into the landscape he creates as he moves in it,
..........he sees a young man
of a beauty that causes him to ache.
The man, Benjamin, is walking toward the Lyceum
with a book in hand. And Walt is devastated.
Fixed in his chair, he is unable to move closer to the window.
Its then some of his own lines come to mind:

.............there is something fierce and terrible
....................in me, eligible to burst forth,
..........I dare not tell it in words...

..........For I know very well that I and robust love belong
....................among you, inland...

..........And thus, touching you, would I silently sleep and be
....................carried eternally.

Then, content with merely seeing him, he rises slowly,
..........like mountains toward skies.
He approaches the door in boots given him by a soldier.
Soon there will be dinner, then a walk up Sixteenth Street,
..........and greetings extended like love-songs
to all passers, to children, to hawkers and beggars.
He will be calmed by this, reassured by the personality he carries
..........in himself like the soul of a glorious wolf.
For he knows that he is beloved of himself, he is beyond contentment,
a well of all that is well-thought, a pool of unspoken
emotions just below the surface, some that loosen those liquid ties
..........to circulate in his spaciousness where they are treasured even unspoken.
Walt is slowing now, not to observe, but to isolate
those thoughts more precious than all the others:
..........that he has seen America, almost become it, that he has loved close and far,
..........fed the starved, aided the dying, and beyond all that
..........that he is here now, in this street, most blessed of men,
..........breathing, growing, moving beyond.

And we slow here too as we approach the end knowing exactly what kind he was.
That he was the most heartfull of beings, most transparent of souls,
..........attuned to and immersed in those transitions
that propelled him beyond us, into an afterlife in which he is
..........the resident sage,
....................the holiest of seers,
..............................the most magnificent of his kind.

Ron Goudreau has been writing poetry since the age of 14, but very seriously for the last seven years, during which time he has taken workshops at the Writers' Center in Bethesda and the University of Virginia. He has published two chapbooks with Argonne Hotel Press: An Audible Touch in 1995, and The Flagellation in 1996.