Chords

Did something happen here? Was it important?
-Michael Arlen, in An American Verdict

The past is never dead. It's not even past.
-William Faulkner

Unless you feel a thing, you can never guess its meaning.
-Emma Goldman

All this I swallow, it tastes good, I like it well,
it becomes mine,
I am the man, I suffer'd, I was there.

The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
The mother of old, condemn'd for a witch,
burnt with dry wood, her children gazing on,

The hounded slave that flags in the race,
leans by the fence,blowing, cover'd with sweat,

The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck
the murderous buckshot and the bullets,

All these I feel or am.

-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself


 


All written material © Bill Schechter, 2016
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