Walt Whitman

Book V. Calamus: Not Heaving From my Ribb’D Breast Only

Not heaving from my ribb’d breast only;
  Not in sighs at night, in rage, dissatisfied with myself;
  Not in those long-drawn, ill-supprest sighs;
  Not in many an oath and promise broken;
  Not in my wilful and savage soul’s volition;
  Not in the subtle nourishment of the air;
  Not in this beating and pounding at my temples and wrists;
  Not in the curious systole and diastole within, which will one day
        cease;
  Not in many a hungry wish, told to the skies only;
  Not in cries, laughter, defiances, thrown from me when alone, far in
        the wilds;
  Not in husky pantings through clench’d teeth;
  Not in sounded and resounded words—chattering words, echoes, dead
        words;
  Not in the murmurs of my dreams while I sleep,
  Nor the other murmurs of these incredible dreams of every day;
  Nor in the limbs and senses of my body, that take you and dismiss you
        continually—Not there;
  Not in any or all of them, O adhesiveness! O pulse of my life!
  Need I that you exist and show yourself, any more than in these
        songs.
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