La extensión de mi cuerpo (Ilustrado/Bilingüe) by Walt Whitman Read Free Book Online

wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.
    His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,
    His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.
    I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,
    Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?
    Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.

37
    Y ou laggards there on guard! look to your arms!
    In at the conquer’d doors they crowd! I am possess’d!
    Embody all presences outlaw’d or suffering,
    See myself in prison shaped like another man,
    And feel the dull unintermitted pain.
    For me the keepers of convicts shoulder their carbines and keep watch,
    It is I let out in the morning and barr’d at night.
    Not a mutineer walks handcuff’d to jail but I am handcuff’d to him and walk by his side,
    (I am less the jolly one there, and more the silent one with sweat on my twitching lips).
    Not a youngster is taken for larceny but I go up too, and am tried and sentenced.
    Not a cholera patient lies at the last gasp but I also lie at the last gasp,
    My face is ash-color’d, my sinews gnarl, away from me people retreat.
    Askers embody themselves in me and I am embodied in them,
    I project my hat, sit shame-faced, and beg.

40
    F launt of the sunshine I need not your bask — lie over!
    You light surfaces only, I force surfaces and depths also.
    Earth! you seem to look for something at my hands,
    Say, old top-knot, what do you want?
    Man or woman, I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
    And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
    And might tell that pining I have, that pulse of my nights and days.
    Behold, I do not give lectures or a little charity,
    When I give I give myself.
    You there, impotent, loose in the knees,
    Open your scarf’d chops till I blow grit within you,
    Spread your palms and lift the flaps of your pockets,
    I am not to be denied, I compel, I have stores plenty and to spare,
    And any thing I have I bestow.
    I do not ask who you are, that is not important to me,
    You can do nothing and be nothing but what I will infold you.
    To cotton-field drudge or cleaner of privies I lean,
    On his right cheek I put the family kiss,
    And in my soul I swear I never will deny him.
    On women fit for conception I start bigger and nimbler babes,
    (This day I am jetting the stuff of far more arrogant republics).
    To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door,
    Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed,
    Let the physician and the priest go home.
    I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will,
    O despairer, here is my neck,
    By God, you shall not go down! hang your whole weight upon me.
    I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up,
    Every room of the house do I fill with an arm’d force,
    Lovers of me, bafflers of graves.
    Sleep — I and they keep guard all night,
    Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you,
    I have embraced you, and henceforth possess you to myself,
    And when you rise in the morning you will find what I tell you is so.

42
    A call in the midst of the crowd,
    My own voice, orotund sweeping and final.
    Come my children,
    Come my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates,
    Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass’d his prelude on the reeds within.
    Easily written loose-finger’d chords — I feel the thrum of your climax and close.
    My head slues round on my neck,
    Music rolls, but not from the organ,
    Folks are around me, but they are no household of mine.
    Ever the hard unsunk ground,
    Ever the eaters and drinkers, ever the upward and downward sun, ever the air and the ceaseless tides,
    Ever myself and my neighbors, refreshing, wicked, real,
    Ever the old inexplicable query, ever that thorn’d thumb, that breath of itches and thirsts,
    Ever the vexer’s hoot! hoot! till we find where the sly one hides and bring him forth,
    Ever love, ever the sobbing liquid of life,
    Ever the bandage under the chin, ever the trestles of