I Sing the Body Electric

by Walt Whitman 1855

 

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you, 

I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,) 

I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems, 

Man’s, woman’s, child’s, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems, 

Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears, 

Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids, 

Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges, 

Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition, 

Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue, 

Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest, 

Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones, 

Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails, 

Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side, 

Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone, 

Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root, 

 

Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above, 

Leg fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg, 

Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel; 

All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female, 

The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean, 

The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame, 

Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity, 

Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman, 

The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings, 

The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud, 

Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming, 

Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening, 

The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes, 

The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair, 

The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body, 

The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out, 

The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees, 

The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones, 

The exquisite realisation of health; 

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, 

O I say now these are the soul!

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