Whitman: Full of Life Now

"Full of life now, compact, visible,
I, forty years old the eighty-third year of the States,
To one a century hence or any number of centuries hence,
To you yet unborn these, seeking you.

When you read these I that was visible am become invisible,
Now it is you, compact, visible, realizing my poems, seeking me,

Fancying how happy you were if I could be with you and become your comrade;

Be it as if I were with you. (Be not too certain but I am now with you.)"

Walt Whitman (1859)

A favorite Whitman poem. In  the year of 1859 (83rd of the States) Whitman, then a physical presence, a man in Time, addresses someone still non existent, but who will be, in the course of one century, or two centuries, as living and sentient as he, the poet, is now.

Whitman speaks from a distant past, one century and a half away from the reader. Whitman speaks to a ghost, as if the ghost were with him in the room. And now, in the present, when his word finally reaches us, he is the ghost, talking to a tangible reader, now taking their place in time. That place Whitman left so long ago.

Sometimes a poem can make the perception of reality tremble. Sometimes a poem, a simple poem, can truly make you understand your essential condition: that you, thinking yourself so tangible, are just a dream, a mere image in the fabric of Time. A vague presence in a quick process of vanishing, in the very same way as that voice now talking to you also vanished.