WEBVTT

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So in Walt Whitman's
masterwork, "Song of Myself,"

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there is pretty much exactly
one little bit of narrative,

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it happens very
early in the poem,

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when the speaker has an erotic
experience lying on the grass.

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He claims it's with his soul.

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And afterwards, this enormous
sense of peace and joy

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arises, so much so that it's
spilling over from the self

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out into the world.

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He says, in that moment, that
"I know that the hand of God

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is the elder hand
of my own, and I

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know the kelson of
the creation is love."

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A kelson is the long
wooden beam that

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holds a wooden boat
together, you know,

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that central spinal beam.

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And then, this feeling of
joy spills over so much

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that it goes down into the
grass and stones, everywhere.

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He says, "heaped stones and
elder, mullein and pokeweed.

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All that, alive with joy."

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I've stolen that
line in this poem

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to use it in a very different
context as you will hear.

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That's kind of
romantic, isn't it?

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Nice.

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[BACKGROUND NOISE]

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"Deep Lane."

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[LAUGHTER]

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We know you're here already.

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"We began to think
the white fish

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individual, the one
of the pair who'd

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struggled, after all, when our
pond's colder water shocked

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and he lay pulsing
in the shallows

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till we thought
him all but gone.

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Then simply drew himself
up, if this were something

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a fish could do, and swam away.

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A heron ate his mate.

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He surfaced in March, after
his first season entombed

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in the bottom mud,
unscathed, a 4-inch emperor

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in his white silk coat.

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Insignia of the kingdom splashed
over his back, the color

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of candied orange rind.

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He'd nose up out
of the lily-murk

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when our shadows
crossed his borders.

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Pushed to the edge to open
the translucent white ring

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of his mouth over and
over as if begging.

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As if!

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Seems to want, seems to feel.

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But as we knew him,
semblance fell away.

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We felt the presence
of the soul of him,

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if soul could be
understood as specificity.

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So that when he
himself was swallowed--

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white appetite perched on the
roof, bill raised to the air,

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the throat unrelenting--

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the absence in the
pond grew resonant.

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A sort of empty ringing.

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Where were the details then?

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The gestures that
had marked him?

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Heap stones and elder,
mullein and pokeweed.

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How can I take any
pleasure in this garden?"

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