Poetry in Motion

Song of the Answerer

and gently and safely by day or by night,

He has the pass-key of hearts, to him the response of the prying

of hands on the knobs.

His welcome is universal, the flow of beauty is not more welcome

or universal than he is,

The person he favors by day or sleeps with at night is blessed.

Every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and tongue,

He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men, and

any man translates, and any man translates himself also,

One part does not counteract another part, he is the joiner, he

sees how they join.He says indifferently and alike 

How are you friend? to the

President at his levee,

And he says Good-day my brother, to Cudge that hoes in the

sugar-field,

And both understand him and know that his speech is right.

He walks with perfect ease in the capitol,

He walks among the Congress, and one Representative says to

another, Here is our equal appearing and new.

Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic,

And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that

he has follow'd the sea,

And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an

artist,

And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them,

No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it or has

follow'd it,

No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and

sisters there.

The English believe he comes of their English stock,

A Jew to the Jew he seems, a Russ to the Russ, usual and near,

removed from none.

Whoever he looks at in the traveler's coffee-house claims him,The Italian or Frenchman is sure, the

 German is sure, the Spaniard

is sure, and the island Cuban is sure,

The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Missis-

sippi or St. Lawrence or Sacramento, or Hudson or Pau-

manok sound, claims him.

The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood,

The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see

themselves in the ways of him, he strangely transmutes them,

They are not vile any more, they hardly know themselves they are

so grown.

2

The indications and tally of time,

Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs,

Time, always without break, indicates itself in parts,

What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant com-

pany of singers, and their words,

The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or

dark, but the words of the maker of poems are the general 

light and dark,

The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality,

His insight and power encircle things and the human race,

He is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human

race.

The singers do not beget, only the Poet begets,

The singers are welcom'd, understood, appear often enough, but

rare has the day been, likewise the spot, of the birth of the 

maker of poems, the Answerer,

(Not every century nor every five centuries has contain'd such a

day, for all its names.)

The singers of successive hours of centuries may have ostensible

names, but the name of each of them is one of the singers,

The name of each is, eye-singer, ear-singer, head-singer, sweet-

singer, night-singer, parlor-singer, love-singer, weird-singer,

or something else.

All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,

The words of true poems do not merely please,

The true poets are not followers of beauty but the august masters

of beauty;

The greatness of sons is the exuding of the greatness of mothers

and fathers,

The words of true poems are the tuft and final applause of science.

Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness

of body, withdrawnness,

Gayety, sun-tan, air-sweetness, such are some of the words of poems.

The sailor and traveler underlie the makers of poems, the Answerer,

The builder, geometer, chemist, anatomist, phrenologist, artist, all

these underlie the maker of poems, the Answerer.

The words of the true poems give you more than poems,

They give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war,

peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, and every thing
else,

They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,

They do not seek beauty, they are sought,

Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing,

fain, love-sick.

They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish, but rather the

outset,

They bring none to his or her terminus or to be content and full,

Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars,

to learn one of the meanings,

To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless

rings and never be quiet again.