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Rh And make short account of neuters and geldings, and favor men and women fully equipped, And beat the gong of revolt, and stop with fugitives and them that plot and conspire.

Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, Disorderly fleshy and sensual .... eating drinking and breeding, No sentimentalist .... no stander above men and women or apart from them .... no more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me .... and whatever is done or said returns at last to me, And whatever I do or say I also return.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging .... through me the current and index.

I speak the password primeval .... I give the sign of democracy; By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

Through me many long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of slaves, Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons, Voices of the diseased and despairing, and of thieves and dwarfs, Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, And of the threads that connect the stars – and of wombs, and of the fatherstuff, And of the rights of them the others are down upon, Of the trivial and flat and foolish and despised, Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices, Voices of sexes and lusts .... voices veiled, and I remove the veil, Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured.

I do not press my finger across my mouth, I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart, Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites, Seeing hearing and feeling are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from: The scent of these arm-pits is aroma finer than prayer, This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds.