How do you know who shall come from the offspring
of his offspring
through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if
you could trace
back through the centuries?)
8
A woman’s body at auction,
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother
of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates
to the mothers.
Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to
all in all nations
and times all over the earth?
If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood
untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body,
is more
beautiful than the most beautiful
face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live
body? or the fool
that corrupted her own live
body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal
themselves.
9
O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you
in other men and
women, nor the likes of the
parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with
the likes of
the soul, (and that they are
the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with
my poems, and
that they are my poems,
Man’s, woman’s, child, youth’s,
wife’s, husband’s, mother’s,
father’s, young man’s,
young woman’s poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and
the waking or
sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws,
and the jaw-hinges, Nose, nostrils of the nose, and
the partition, Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat,
back of the neck, neck-slue, Strong shoulders, manly
beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the
ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews,
arm-bones, Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles,
thumb, forefinger,
finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone,
breast-side, Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the
backbone, Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward
and outward round,
man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings
of my or your
body or of any one’s
body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet
and clean, The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality,
maternity, Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and
the man that comes from woman, The womb, the teats,
nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
love-looks, love-perturbations


