You
Japanese
man or woman!
Whitman
You mountaineer living lawlessly on the Taurus or Caucasus!
You Bokh horse-herd, watching your mares and stallions feeding!
You beautiful-bodied Persian, at full speed in the saddle shooting arrows
to the mark!
You Chinaman and Chinawoman of China! you Tartar of Tartary!
You women of the earth subordinated at your tasks!
You Jew journeying in your old age through every risk, to stand once on
Syrian ground!
You other Jews waiting in all lands for your Messiah!
You thoughtful Armenian, pondering by some stream of the Euphrates! you
peering amid the ruins of Nineveh! you ascending Mount Ararat!
You foot-worn pilgrim welcoming the far-away sparkle of the minarets of
Mecca!
You sheiks along the stretch from Suez to Babelmandeb, ruling your families
and tribes!
You olive-grower tending your fruit on fields of Nazareth, Damascus, or
Lake Tiberias!
You Thibet trader on the wide inland, or bargaining in the shops of Lassa!
You Japanese man or woman! you liver in Madagascar, Ceylon, Sumatra,
Borneo!
All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of
place!
All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea!
And you of centuries hence, when you listen to me!
And you, each and everywhere, whom I specify not, but include just the
same!
Health to you! Goodwill to you all--from me and America sent.
Each of us inevitable;
Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her right upon the earth;
Each of us allowed the eternal purports of the earth:
Each of us here as divinely as any is here.
12.
You Hottentot with clicking palate! You woolly-haired hordes!
You owned persons, dropping sweat-drops or blood-drops!
You human forms with the fathomless ever-impressive countenances of brutes!
I dare not refuse you--the scope of the world, and of time and space, are
upon me.
You poor koboo whom the meanest of the rest look down upon, for all your
glimmering language and spirituality!
