Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Inside climate

Climate is the statistics of weather. True. But there is more to it. Climate is also the atmospheric envelope we live in. There is no outside to climate; we are always in it.

Walt Whitman (1819–1892).  Leaves of Grass.  1900.

1
I CELEBRATE myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.
  
I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.
  
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes—the shelves are crowded with perfumes;
I breathe the fragrance myself, and know it and like it;
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
  
The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless;
It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it;
I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked;
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
  
2

The smoke of my own breath;
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine;
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs;
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore, and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn;
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice, words loos’d to the eddies of the wind;
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms;
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag;
The delight alone, or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides;
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

3 comments:

Henk Hak said...

That's a great poem, Werner.
A celebration of life on this planet. Walt Whitman writes with such freshness.
(For those who like poetry:
http://blog.shunya.net/shunyas_blog/2009/04/love_after_love.html
)

Mathis Hampel said...

I have lived in good climate and it bores the hell out of me, I rather live in weather than climate.

John Steinbeck

Unknown said...

Werner, it is extremely refreshing to have you here! Thanks for the poem.