From Pent-Up, Aching Rivers

From pent-up aching rivers

From pent-up aching rivers

From that of myself without which I were nothing

From what I am determined to make illustrious

Even if I stand sole among men

From my own voice resonant, singing the phallus

Singing the song of procreation

Singing the need of superb children

And therein superb grown people

Singing the muscular urge and the blending

Singing the bedfellow's song

O resistless yearning

O for any and each the body correlative attracting

O for you whoever you are your correlative body

O it, more than all else, you delighting

From the hungry gnaw that eats me night and day

From native moments, from bashful pains, singing them

Seeking something yet unfound

Though I have diligently sought it many a long year

Singing the true song of the soul fitful at random

Renascent with grossest Nature or among animals

Of that, of them and what goes with them my poems informing

Of the smell of apples and lemons

Of the pairing of birds

Of the wet of woods

Of the lapping of waves

Of the mad pushes of waves upon the land

I them chanting

The overture lightly sounding

The strain anticipating,

The welcome nearness

The sight of the perfect body,

The swimmer swimming naked in the bath

Or motionless on his back lying and floating

The female form approaching, I pensive

Love-flesh tremulous aching

The divine list for myself or you or for any one making

The face, the limbs

The index from head to foot, and what it arouses

The mystic deliria

The madness amorous, the utter abandonment,

Hark close and still what I now whisper to you

I love you

O you entirely possess me

O that you and I escape from the rest and go utterly off

Free and lawless,

Two hawks in the air

Two fishes swimming in the sea not more lawless than we

The furious storm through me careering

I passionately trembling

The oath of the inseparableness of two together

Of the woman that loves me and whom I love more than my life

That oath swearing

O I willingly stake all for you

O let me be lost if it must be so

O you and I, what is it to us what the rest do or think

What is all else to us?

Only that we enjoy each other and exhaust each other if it must be so

From the master, the pilot I yield the vessel to

The general commanding me

Commanding all, from him permission taking,

From time the programme hastening

I have loitered too long as it is

From sex

From the warp and from the woof

From privacy

From frequent repinings alone

From plenty of persons near and yet the right person not near

From the soft sliding of hands over me and thrusting of fingers

Through my hair and beard

From the long sustained kiss upon the mouth or bosom

From the close pressure that makes me or any man drunk

Fainting with excess

From what the divine husband knows

from the work of fatherhood,

From exultation

Victory and relief

From the bedfellow's embrace in the night

From the act-poems of eyes

Hands, hips , and bosoms

From the cling of the trembling arm,

From the bending curve and the clinch

From side by side the pliant coverlet off-throwing

From the one so unwilling to have me leave

And me just as un-willing to leave

Yet a moment O tender waiter, and I return

From the hour of shining stars and dropping dews

From the night a moment I emerging flitting out

Celebrate you act divine and you children prepared for

And you stalwart loins