A CHILD SAID, WHAT IS GRASS?
By Walt Whitman
Illuminated by Riverdave Owen,
Recited In Memory of Dr. Holger Nygard 1921 - 2015
Duke University East Campus, Durham, NC, August 1, 2015
A child said, What is grass?
Fetching it to me with full hands
How could I answer the child
I do not know what it is any more than he
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition Dr. Nygard
Out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or, I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord
A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropped
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners
That we may see and remark
And ask, Whose?
Or, I guess the grass is itself a child
The produced babe of vegetation.
Or, I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic
Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones
Growing among black folks and white folks
Kanuk, Tuckahoe and Congressman, Cuff
Canadians and Southerners, politicians and slaves
I give them the same, I receive them the same.
And now the grass appears as the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you, Oh curling grass
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them
It may be you are from old people and from women
And from offspring taken soon out of their mother’s laps
And here you are the mother’s lap.
This grass is too green to be from the white heads of old mothers
Greener than the colorless beards of old men
Too green to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths
Oh, I perceive after all so many uttering tongues
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
I wish I could translate these hints of the dead young men and women
And the hints about old men and mothers
And the offspring taken soon out of their laps
What do you think has become of the young and old men
And what do you think has become of the women and children?
They are all alive and well somewhere
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death
And if ever there was
It led life forward and does not wait at the end to arrest it
All goes onward and outward and nothing collapses
For to die is different than what any one supposed
And luckier!
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