No More Learning

O baffled, baulked, bent to the very earth,
Oppressed with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that, amid all the blab whose echoes recoil upon me, I have not
once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before all my insolent poems, the real ME stands yet untouched,
untold, altogether unreached,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to all these songs, and then to the sand beneath.

Now I perceive I have not understood anything--not a single object--and
that no man ever can.

I perceive Nature, here in sight of the sea, is taking advantage of me, to
dart upon me, and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.


3.

You oceans both! I close with you;
These little shreds shall indeed stand for all.

You friable shore, with trails of debris!
You fish-shaped Island! I take what is underfoot;
What is yours is mine, my father.

I too, Paumanok,
I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float, and been washed on
your shores;
I too am but a trail of drift and debris,
I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped Island.

I throw myself upon your breast, my father,
I cling to you so that you cannot unloose me,
I hold you so firm till you answer me something.

Kiss me, my father,
Touch me with your lips, as I touch those I love,
Breathe to me, while I hold you close, the secret of the wondrous murmuring
I envy.


4.

Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return. )
Cease not your moaning, you fierce old Mother,
Endlessly cry for your castaways--but fear not, deny not me,
Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet, as I touch you, or
gather from you.
I mean tenderly by you,
I gather for myself, and for this phantom, looking down where we lead, and
following me and mine.

Me and mine!
We, loose winrows, little corpses,
Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,
(See! from my dead lips the ooze exuding at last!
See--the prismatic colours, glistening and rolling! )
Tufts of straw, sands, fragments,
Buoyed hither from many moods, one contradicting another,
From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell;
Musing, pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil;
Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown;
A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted at
random;
Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature;
Just as much, whence we come, that blare of the cloud-trumpets;
We, capricious, brought hither, we know not whence, spread out before you,
You, up there, walking or sitting,
Whoever you are--we too lie in drifts at your feet.




_WONDERS. _


1.

Who learns my lesson complete?
Boss, journeyman, apprentice--churchman and atheist,
The stupid and the wise thinker--parents and offspring--merchant, clerk,
porter, and customer,
Editor, author, artist; and schoolboy--Draw nigh and commence;
It is no lesson--it lets down the bars to a good lesson,
And that to another, and every one to another still.


2.

The great laws take and effuse without argument;
I am of the same style, for I am their friend,
I love them quits and quits--I do not halt and make salaams.

I lie abstracted, and hear beautiful tales of things, and the reasons of
things;
They are so beautiful I nudge myself to listen.
I cannot say to any person what I hear--I cannot say it to myself--it is
very wonderful.

It is no small matter, this round and delicious globe, moving so exactly in
its orbit for ever and ever, without one jolt, or the untruth of a
single second;
I do not think it was made in six days, nor in ten thousand years, nor ten
billions of years,
Nor planned and built one thing after another, as an architect plans and
builds a house.
I do not think seventy years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that seventy millions of years is the time of a man or woman,
Nor that years will ever stop the existence of me, or any one else.