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CounterPunch
January
27, 2003
Respondez! Respondez!
by WALT WHITMAN
(The war is completed-the price
is paid-the title is settled beyond recall;)
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none
evade!
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking?
Let me bring this to a close-I pronounce openly for a new distribution
of
roles;
Let that which stood in front go behind! and let that which was
behind
advance to the front and speak;
Let murderers, bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions!
Let the old propositions be postponed!
Let faces and theories be turn'd inside out! let meanings be
freely criminal,
as well as results!
Let there be no suggestion above the suggestion of drudgery!
Let none be pointed toward his destination! (Say! do you know
your
destination?)
Let men and women be mock'd with bodies and mock'd with Souls!
Let the love that waits in them, wait! let it die, or pass stillborn
to other
spheres!
Let the sympathy that waits in every man, wait! or let it also
pass, a dwarf,
to other spheres!
Let contradictions prevail! let one thing contradict another!
and let one
line of my poems contradict another!
Let the people sprawl with yearning, aimless hands! let their
tongues be
broken! let their eyes be discouraged! let none descend into
their hearts
with the fresh lusciousness of love!
(Stifled, O days! O lands! in every public and private corruption!
Smother'd in thievery, impotence, shamelessness, mountain-high;
Brazen effrontery, scheming, rolling like ocean's waves around
and upon you,
O my days! my lands!
For not even those thunderstorms, nor fiercest lightnings of
the war, have
purified the atmosphere;)
-Let the theory of America still be management, caste, comparison!
(Say! what
other theory would you?)
Let them that distrust birth and death still lead the rest! (Say!
why shall
they not lead you?)
Let the crust of hell be neared and trod on! let the days be
darker than the
nights! let slumber bring less slumber than waking time brings!
Let the world never appear to him or her for whom it was all
made!
Let the heart of the young man still exile itself from the heart
of the old
man! and let the heart of the old man be exiled from that of
the young man!
Let the sun and moon go! let scenery take the applause of the
audience! let
there be apathy under the stars!
Let freedom prove no man's inalienable right! every one who can
tyrannize,
let him tyrannize to his satisfaction!
Let none but infidels be countenanced!
Let the eminence of meanness, treachery, sarcasm, hate, greed,
indecency,
impotence, lust, be taken for granted above all! let writers,
judges,
governments, households, religions, philosophies, take such for
granted above
all!
Let the worst men beget children out of the worst women!
Let the priest still play at immortality!
Let death be inaugurated!
Let nothing remain but the ashes of teachers, artists, moralists,
lawyers,
and learn'd and polite persons!
Let him who is without my poems be assassinated!
Let the cow, the horse, the camel, the garden-bee-let the mudfish,
the
lobster, the mussel, eel, the sting-ray, and the grunting pig-fish-let
these,
and the like of these, be put on a perfect equality with man
and woman!
35
Let churches accommodate serpents, vermin, and the corpses of
those who have
died of the most filthy of diseases!
Let marriage slip down among fools, and be for none but fools!
Let men among themselves talk and think forever obscenely of
women! and let
women among themselves talk and think obscenely of men!
Let us all, without missing one, be exposed in public, naked,
monthly, at the
peril of our lives! let our bodies be freely handled and examined
by whoever
chooses!
Let nothing but copies at second hand be permitted to exist upon
the earth!
Let the earth desert God, nor let there ever henceforth be mention'd
the name
of God!
Let there be no God!
Let there be money, business, imports, exports, custom, authority,
precedents, pallor, dyspepsia, smut, ignorance, unbelief!
Let judges and criminals be transposed! let the prison-keepers
be put in
prison! let those that were prisoners take the keys! Say! why
might they not
just as well be transposed?)
Let the slaves be masters! let the masters become slaves!
Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever
bawling! let
an idiot or insane person appear on each of the stands!
Let the Asiatic, the African, the European, the American, and
the Australian,
go armed against the murderous stealthiness of each other! let
them sleep
armed! let none believe in good will!
Let there be no unfashionable wisdom! let such be scorn'd and
derided off
from the earth!
Let a floating cloud in the sky-let a wave of the sea-let growing
mint,
spinach, onions, tomatoes-let these be exhibited as shows, at
a great price
for admission!
Let all the men of These States stand aside for a few smouchers!
let the few
seize on what they choose! let the rest gawk, giggle, starve,
obey!
Let shadows be furnish'd with genitals! let substances be deprived
of their
genitals!
Let there be wealthy and immense cities-but still through any
of them, not a
single poet, savior, knower, lover!
Let the infidels of These States laugh all faith away!
If one man be found who has faith, let the rest set upon him!
Let them affright faith! let them destroy the power of breeding
faith!
Let the she-harlots and the he-harlots be prudent! let them dance
on, while
seeming lasts! (O seeming! seeming! seeming!)
Let the preachers recite creeds! let them still teach only what
they have
been taught!
Let insanity still have charge of sanity!
Let books take the place of trees, animals, rivers, clouds!
Let the daub'd portraits of heroes supersede heroes!
Let the manhood of man never take steps after itself!
Let it take steps after eunuchs, and after consumptive and genteel
persons!
Let the white person again tread the black person under his heel!
(Say! which
is trodden under heel, after all?)
Let the reflections of the things of the world be studied in
mirrors! let the
things themselves still continue unstudied!
Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself!
Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself!
(What real happiness have you had one single hour through your
whole life?)
Let the limited years of life do nothing for the limitless years
of death!
(What do you suppose death will do, then?)
Yesterday's
Features
Anne Gwynne
Murder
in Zawatta
Thomas Mountain
The
War You Never Heard About: Holocaust of the Horn
Alwyn Moss
Military
Might Threatens the Planet: When Wisdom Lags Behind Technopower
Jennifer Berkshire
Porto
Alegre Diary I
Why Are We Here?
Jason Leopold
Bush
as a B-Grade Nixon
Selling a War No One Wants
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Will Attack Iraq:
Chemical Weapons or Not
William M. Evan
What
If Saddam Went Into Exile?
Rep. Dennis Kucinich
Peace
as a Civil Right
David Vest
The Bush Balloon is Wheezing
What a World, What a World
Wayne Madsen
Rumsfeld's Dementia
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January 25
/ 26, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
War as Football Game
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Too Many Smoking Guns: Israel, American Jews and the War on Iraq
Chris Clarke
Collateral Damage: Draft Resistance and the Peace Mvt.
Bruce Jackson
Killing an Oak Tree: a Gratuitous Death
Jennifer Berkshire
Porto Allegre Diary II: Building the Party, Lula Style
Forrest Hylton
Left Turns in South America
Edward Said
When Will Arabs Resist?
William A.
Cook
Israeli
Democracy: Fact or Fiction?
Anthony Gancarski
America Never Was America to Me
Subcomandante
Marcos
Zaps to Basques: Lighten Up!
Ellen Cantarow
Music Lives in Palestine
Marta Russell
Extinguishing Frida Kahlo
Adam Engel
Man in the Black Suit: a novelini
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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