http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/benediction-after-walt-whitman Just another bbPress community en-US Sat, 18 May 2013 15:47:26 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/search.php http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/topic/benediction-after-walt-whitman#post-292161 Sun, 17 Feb 2013 22:13:21 +0000 mcelderrypoems 292161@http://www.stephenfry.com/forum/ <p>Benediction (After Walt Whitman)</p> <p>Let your arms enfold a comrade&#39;s embrace around me<br /> and your lips bestow a chorus of kisses upon my yearning face:<br /> they will make music as they touch my skin,<br /> each kiss a note of its own accord,<br /> rising to the war-crimsoned sky<br /> and falling back upon the blood soaked ground.</p> <p>And if this is not enough to quell the clamour of guns,<br /> let the notes become seeds as they tumble down<br /> and when they have sought shelter in the gore-moist earth,<br /> they will grow as trees, giving song birds branches of friendship<br /> so their trilling can fill the air,<br /> until the cries of our poor comrades become antiphons of joy<br /> and the weeping of shell-shocked bairns is stilled in their cradling harmony.</p> <p>Sing, O sing to me with your kisses,<br /> sing me a benediction as old as time,<br /> sing me the tune the stars sang when they were born,<br /> let the strife-dark sky become a gleaming sound-bowl,<br /> till the Earth resonates with love&#39;s dream-song. </p> <p>This poem was inspired by reading Walt Whitman&#39;s &#39;A Song&#39; (from &#39;Leaves of Grass&#39;) : at first reading it seems pleasant though unremarkable but after a few days you realise its language has worked its way deep inside you, revealing Whitman&#39;s genius - to make a great, beautiful and expansive work of art from such simple material. </p>