So Long!

To conclude, I announce what comes after me. // I remember I said before my leaves sprang at all, / I would raise my voice jocund and strong with reference to consummations. // When America does what was promis’d, / When through these States walk a hundred millions of superb persons, / When the rest part away for superb persons and contribute to them, / When breeds of the most perfect mothers denote America, / Then to me and mine our due fruition. // I have press’d through in my own right, / I have sung the body and the soul, war and peace have I sung, and the songs of life and death, / And the songs of birth, and shown that there are many births. // I have offer’d my style to every one, I have journey’d with confident step; / While my pleasure is yet at the full I whisper So long! / And take the young woman’s hand and the young man’s hand for the last time. // I announce natural persons to arise, / I announce justice triumphant, / I announce uncompromising liberty and equality, / I announce the justification of candor and the justification of pride. // I announce that the identity of these States is a single identity only, / I announce the Union more and more compact, indissoluble, / I announce splendors and majesties to make all the previous politics of the earth insignificant. // I announce adhesiveness, I say it shall be limitless, unloosen’d, / I say you shall yet find the friend you were looking for. // I announce a man or woman coming, perhaps you are the one, (So long!) / I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully arm’d. // I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, / I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation. // I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded, / I announce a race of splendid and savage old men. // O thicker and faster—(So long!) / O crowding too close upon me, / I foresee too much, it means more than I thought, / It appears to me I am dying. // Hasten throat and sound your last, / Salute me—salute the days once more. Peal the old cry once more. // Screaming electric, the atmosphere using, / At random glancing, each as I notice absorbing, / Swiftly on, but a little while alighting, / Curious envelop’d messages delivering, / Sparkles hot, seed ethereal down in the dirt dropping, / Myself unknowing, my commission obeying, to question it never daring, / To ages and ages yet the growth of the seed leaving, / To troops out of the war arising, they the tasks I have set promulging, / To women certain whispers of myself bequeathing, their affection me more clearly explaining, / To young men my problems offering—no dallier I—I the muscle of their brains trying, / So I pass, a little time vocal, visible, contrary, / Afterward a melodious echo, passionately bent for, (death making me really undying,) / The best of me then when no longer visible, for toward that I have been incessantly preparing. // What is there more, that I lag and pause and crouch extended with unshut mouth? / Is there a single final farewell? // My songs cease, I abandon them, / From behind the screen where I hid I advance personally solely to you. / Camerado, this is no book, / Who touches this touches a man, / (Is it night? are we here together alone?) / It is I you hold and who holds you, / I spring from the pages into your arms—decease calls me forth. // O how your fingers drowse me, / Your breath falls around me like dew, your pulse lulls the tympans of my ears, / I feel immerged from head to foot, / Delicious, enough. // Enough O deed impromptu and secret, / Enough O gliding present—enough O summ’d-up past. // Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss, / I give it especially to you, do not forget me, / I feel like one who has done work for the day to retire awhile, / I receive now again of my many translations, from my avataras ascending, while others doubtless await me, / An unknown sphere more real than I dream’d, more direct, darts awakening rays about me, So long! / Remember my words, I may again return, / I love you, I depart from materials, / I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.