TUESDAY POEM | Who Learns My Lessons Complete? by Walt Whitman

CB | Light Calligraphy

                    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.
                     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 plann'd 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.
                     Is it wonderful that I should be immortal? as every one is immortal;
                     I know it is wonderful, but my eyesight is equally wonderful, and
                     how I was conceived in my mother's womb is equally wonderful,
                     And pass'd from a babe in the creeping trance of a couple of
                     summers and winters to articulate and walk--all this is
                     equally wonderful.
                     And that my soul embraces you this hour, and we affect each other
                     without ever seeing each other, and never perhaps to see
                     each other, is every bit as wonderful.
                     And that I can think such thoughts as these is just as wonderful,
                     And that I can remind you, and you think them and know them to
                     be true, is just as wonderful.
                     And that the moon spins round the earth and on with the earth, is
                     equally wonderful,
                     And that they balance themselves with the sun and stars is equally
                     wonderful.

                     Walt Whitman

To read this week's Tuesday Poems, click on the quill then make your way down the list of poets on the Left-hand side of the TP page. Zireaux is this week's editor. Bonzai by Cecily Barnes begins -  

                     Who needs your stunted style, your tiny jewels

                     of thwarted art, to snatch a kite flown loose

                     or bad-thrown ball? Or your unsayable rules

                     of infinite pleasures unknown, delights abstruse,

                     to feel soft feathers, their talons' sponsal band? . . .

Zireaux's commentary is anything but stunted! He takes the reader on what I think you'll agree is a fair romp of personal disclosure.