As I wandered around, I found the rare and first edition case, locked and behind glass, and there, right there, was a first edition of Leaves of Grass. I was enthralled, staring at it, thinking, I wonder if one day I will ever have that. I realised, immediately, that a first edition of Leaves of Grass is not something you buy for yourself, and so I thought to myself, I wonder who in my life would even know that this would mean something to me. I could think of maybe two people at most. I'm outing myself, I guess, making the confession of confessions: I love Walt Whitman and I love Leaves of Grass.
Last year, B & L were visiting in England and we were in another book shop in Oxford. I was looking at a copy of the complete works of William Blake and I made an offhand comment about how one day, when I grew up, I wanted to have books like this. And then, a couple of days later, they gave it to me, out of the blue. It was fabulous — absolutely perfect.
Where was I going with all this... Ah yes, an excuse to post a bit of Whitman, truly one of the most important Americans. Which reminds me that I need to write a post about transcendentalism and pragmatism. Anyway, for now:
The smoke of my own breath;
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine;
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs;
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore, and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn;
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice, words loos’d to the eddies of the wind;
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms;
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag;
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.