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A CHILD said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; | |
| How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. | |
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| I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. | |
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| Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, | |
| A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped, | 5 |
| Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? | |
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| Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. | |
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| Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, | |
| And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, | |
| Growing among black folks as among white, | 10 |
| Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. | |
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| And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. | |
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| Tenderly will I use you curling grass, | |
| It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, | |
| It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, | 15 |
| It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers’ laps, | |
| And here you are the mothers’ laps. | |
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| This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, | |
| Darker than the colorless beards of old men, | |
| Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths. | 20 |
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| O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues, | |
| And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for nothing. | |
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| I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women, | |
| And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. | |
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| What do you think has become of the young and old men? | 25 |
| And what do you think has become of the women and children? | |
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| They are alive and well somewhere, | |
| The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, | |
| And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, | |
| And ceased the moment life appeared. | 30 |
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| All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, | |
| And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. | |
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| Has any one supposed it lucky to be born? | |
| I hasten to inform him or her, it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. * * * * * | |
| My foothold is tenoned and mortised in granite, | 35 |
| I laugh at what you call dissolution, | |
| And I know the amplitude of time. | |
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