When the script preaches instead of the preacher,
When the pulpit descends and goes instead of the carver that carved
    the supporting desk,
When I can touch the body of books by night or by day, and when they
    touch my body back again,
When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child
    convince,
When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the night-watchman’s daughter,
When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite and are my friendly
    companions,
I intend to reach them my hand, and make as much of them as I do
    of men and women like you.

[Book XVI]

} A Song of the Rolling Earth

     1
A song of the rolling earth, and of words according,
Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines?
    those curves, angles, dots? 
No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground
    and sea,
They are in the air, they are in you.

Were you thinking that those were the words, those delicious sounds
    out of your friends’ mouths? 
No, the real words are more delicious than they.

Human bodies are words, myriads of words,
(In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or woman’s,
    well-shaped, natural, gay,
Every part able, active, receptive, without shame or the need of shame.)

Air, soil, water, fire—­those are words,
I myself am a word with them—­my qualities interpenetrate with
    theirs—­my name is nothing to them,
Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would
    air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?

A healthy presence, a friendly or commanding gesture, are words,
    sayings, meanings,
The charms that go with the mere looks of some men and women,
    are sayings and meanings also.

The workmanship of souls is by those inaudible words of the earth,
The masters know the earth’s words and use them more than audible words.

Amelioration is one of the earth’s words,
The earth neither lags nor hastens,
It has all attributes, growths, effects, latent in itself from the jump,
It is not half beautiful only, defects and excrescences show just as
    much as perfections show.

The earth does not withhold, it is generous enough,
The truths of the earth continually wait, they are not so conceal’d either,
They are calm, subtle, untransmissible by print,
They are imbued through all things conveying themselves willingly,
Conveying a sentiment and invitation, I utter and utter,
I speak not, yet if you hear me not of what avail am I to you? 
To bear, to better, lacking these of what avail am I?

(Accouche! accouchez! 
Will you rot your own fruit in yourself there? 
Will you squat and stifle there?)

The earth does not argue,
Is not pathetic, has no arrangements,
Does not scream, haste, persuade, threaten, promise,
Makes no discriminations, has no conceivable failures,
Closes nothing, refuses nothing, shuts none out,
Of all the powers, objects, states, it notifies, shuts none out.