Listen to:
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.
I guess it must be the flag
of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief
of the Lord,
A scented gift and
remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name
someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is
itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
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,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe,
Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same,
I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the
beautiful uncut hair of graves.
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,
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.
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.
O I perceive after all so
many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not
come from the roofs of mouths for nothing.
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.
What do you think has become
of the young and old men?
And what do you think has
become of the women and children?
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 ceas'd the moment life
appear'd.
All goes onward and outward,
nothing collapses,
And to die is different from
what any one supposed, and luckier.
