Walt Whitman's Hands
M. Bromberg, 1982
This is the land Walt Whitman made
with his own hands, roughly and eagerly.
He built his cities of strongest iron,
yet with a tinker's eye and economy.
These mountains are his gentle mountains,
their soft curves a woman's reclining mood
or as a soldier's ease, at rest.
He saw stands of pine, straight and green,
saw locomotives crossing flatbed West.
His hands were no poet's alabaster,
writing odes to king or cunning dark.
His lines were sinew, flesh and blood
were in them, a surprising human spark.
His was the telegraph, the railroad, the prairie open wide,
and a people with marvelous ambition.
Prairie farmer or city dweller he loved them both;
and above them all, stars to fill the canopy of heaven.
When Whitman prayed he prayed to God and Man.
They were equals. No War was just
where sons and fathers died as one, and who,
beseeching God with each failing breath,
hailed death as their priceless victory. He cried.
The ground bled, the ground shook
where brother and brother were laid aside.
No War nor wounding sorrow
could stop a nation's building, or stay
the stars from turning in their courses.
Now the young men Whitman would embrace,
each one, are buried under stone,
joined once more in a last great confederacy,
their names both known and unknown.
They are at rest in Gettysburg,
and in Elmira's quiet fields;
the places where they died are fair again
with grasses soft, and in truth revealed.
This is the land Walt Whitman made.
There is ground still wet with morning dew
and cities as real as stalks of wheat,
their towers topped where the skies are still blue.
The poet's mark is on the mountains,
his voice is with us yet.
His land is ours, the land endures:
it is our strength, and his testament.
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