Read La extensión de mi cuerpo (Ilustrado/Bilingüe) for Free Online

in your eyes?
    It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.
    My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and day-long ramble,
    They rise together, they slowly circle around.
    I believe in those wing’d purposes,
    And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
    And consider green and violet and the tufted crown intentional,
    And do not call the tortoise unworthy because she is not something else,
    And the jay in the woods never studied the gamut, yet trills pretty well to me,
    And the look of the bay mare shames silliness out of me.

14
    T he wild gander leads his flock through the cool night,
    Ya-honk he says, and sounds it down to me like an invitation,
    The pert may suppose it meaningless, but I listening close,
    Find its purpose and place up there toward the wintry sky.
    The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the house-sill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog,
    The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats,
    The brood of the turkey-hen and she with her half-spread wings,
    I see in them and myself the same old law.
    The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,
    They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
    I am enamour’d of growing out-doors,
    Of men that live among cattle or taste of the ocean or woods,
    Of the builders and steerers of ships and the wielders of axes and mauls, and the drivers of horses,
    I can eat and sleep with them week in and week out.
    What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me,
    Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
    Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me,
    Not asking the sky to come down to my good will,
    Scattering it freely forever.

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    T hese are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me,
    If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next to nothing,
    If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are nothing,
    If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.
    This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
    This the common air that bathes the globe.

18
    W ith music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums,
    I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer’d and slain persons.
    Have you heard that it was good to gain the day?
    I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won.
    I beat and pound for the dead,
    I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.
    Vivas to those who have fail’d!
    And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
    And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
    And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes!
    And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!

19
    T his is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
    It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make appointments with all,
    I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
    The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
    The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
    There shall be no difference between them and the rest.
    This is the press of a bashful hand, this the float and odor of hair,
    This the touch of my lips to yours, this the murmur of yearning,
    This the far-off depth and height reflecting my own face,
    This the thoughtful merge of myself, and the outlet again.
    Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
    Well I have, for the Fourth-month showers have, and the mica on the side of a rock has.
    Do you take it I would astonish?
    Does the daylight astonish? does the early redstart twittering through the woods?
    Do I astonish more than they?
    This hour I tell things in confidence,
    I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.

20
    W ho goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
    How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?
    What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?
    All I mark