The Poem That Changed My Life
Also, in honor of poetry-month (?), here’s a passage that I commited to memory when I was in High School and Walt Whitman was like revealed wisdom to me. My dad had given me a copy of Whitman’s collected works when I was in, like, 8th grade or so, after I made some dumb-ass statement about how poetry is stupid and not relevant to anything in the “real world.”
By the time I was a sophomore, two years later, I had read the whole thing backwards and forwards and realized just what a special brand of fool and asshole I had been in making such a statement.
I still use that same book, now falling apart and beaten up from use, as a kind of ad-hoc I-ching, consulting it by opening to a random page and seeing what advice old Uncle Walt might have for me.
But this passage from Song of the Open Road was always my favorite thing. It changed how I looked at myself and everybody else.
|
From this hour, freedom! |
|
| From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, | |
| Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute, | 55 |
| Listening to others, and considering well what they say, | |
| Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, | |
| Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me. | |
| I inhale great draughts of space; | |
| The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. | 60 |
| I am larger, better than I thought; | |
| I did not know I held so much goodness. | |
| All seems beautiful to me; | |
| I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me, I would do the same to you. |
