Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the the walk of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands,
Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true soul and body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking , suffering, dying.
Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you may be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.
I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,
None has understood you, but I understand you,
None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself,
None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,
None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you.
O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!
You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life,
Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,
What you have done returns already in mockeries.
The mockeries are not you,
Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,
I pursue you where none else has pursued you,
Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me.
Whoever you are! claim your own at any hazard!
Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, whatever you are promulges itself,
Through birth, life, burial, the means are provided, nothing is scanted,
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you are picks its way.
-w.w.
"To You"
1819-1892
(slightly condensed)
If I could be so lucky as to hear these unadulterated words spoken softly and genuinely to me-- or if I could be so bold as to do so to another myself. -k.p.b.
