Three Poems from the Westmont College Choir Concert – May 2016

“the joy of our spirit is uncaged”
~ Walt Whitman

“Tu Voz”

Singing unto the sun and sky with your song,
your voice threshes the grain of the day,
the pines speak with their green tongues,
as the birds of winter trill.
The sea fills its cellars with footsteps,
with bells, chains, and groans —
metal and tools jangle,
wheels of the caravan creak.

But I hear only your voice —
Your voice rising with the flight and
precision of an arrow,
your voice falling with the gravity of rain,
your voice scattering the highest swords,
and returning, laden with violets —
accompanying me through the heavens.

Shawn Kichner

“I am not Yours”

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love – put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

Sarah Teasdale

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“I Dreamed a Dream” by Walt Whitman

I dream’d in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the
whole of the rest of the earth —
I dream’d that was the new city of Friends —
nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love, it led the rest —
it was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city,
and in all their looks and words.

Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass (Part 66: “I Dreamed a Dream”)

quoted in “Blue Bloods”
Season 1, Episode 4 “Officer Down”

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Words from Whitman

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
the pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me:
the first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate into a new tongue.

Walt Whitman
Song of Myself (1891-1892)

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Things Campbell McGrath Says …

… in his poetry collection, SEVEN NOTEBOOKS:

“But here’s one perfect, heart-shaped berry, and half a row later, three more, in the shadows, overlooked. Where has my family gone? Where is everybody? I find myself abandoned in the fields, illumined by shafts of sunlight through lavender clouds, bodiless, unmoored and entirely happy.” Blueberry Notebook (p.13)

“Reading Walt Whitman at Dawn”

Wakened by the sound
of feet on the porch I find
two sparrows, hopping!

What is the dune grass
trying to do — praise the sun
or go back to sleep?

Friendly grasshopper,
tell me the name of that bird
and I’ll sing with you.

Dawn Notebook (p.110)

“Why have these haiku chosen me as their instrument?” from “August 6” (p.134)

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“Out of the Rolling Ocean” by Walt Whitman

Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop to me

Whispering:  I love you, before long I die,

I have travel’d a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you,

For I could not die till I once look’d on you,

For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.

*

(Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe;

Return in peace to the ocean, my love;

I too am part of that ocean, my love — we are not so much separated;

Behold the great rondure — the cohesion of all, how perfect!

But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,

As for an hour, carrying us diverse — yet cannot carry us diverse for ever;

Be not impatient –a little space — Know you, I salute the air, the ocean, and the land,

Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.)

*

Walt Whitman

Leaves of Grass (1900)

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