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Best Famous Immerses Poems

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Diving into the Wreck

 First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and away into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

Written by Walt Whitman |

Now List to my Morning's Romanza

 1
NOW list to my morning’s romanza—I tell the signs of the Answerer; 
To the cities and farms I sing, as they spread in the sunshine before me. 

A young man comes to me bearing a message from his brother; 
How shall the young man know the whether and when of his brother? 
Tell him to send me the signs.

And I stand before the young man face to face, and take his right hand in my left hand,
 and his
 left
 hand in my right hand, 
And I answer for his brother, and for men, and I answer for him that answers for all, and
 send
 these
 signs. 

2
Him all wait for—him all yield up to—his word is decisive and final, 
Him they accept, in him lave, in him perceive themselves, as amid light, 
Him they immerse, and he immerses them.

Beautiful women, the haughtiest nations, laws, the landscape, people, animals, 
The profound earth and its attributes, and the unquiet ocean, (so tell I my morning’s
 romanza;)

All enjoyments and properties, and money, and whatever money will buy, 
The best farms—others toiling and planting, and he unavoidably reaps, 
The noblest and costliest cities—others grading and building, and he domiciles there;
Nothing for any one, but what is for him—near and far are for him, the ships in the
 offing, 
The perpetual shows and marches on land, are for him, if they are for any body. 

He puts things in their attitudes; 
He puts to-day out of himself, with plasticity and love; 
He places his own city, times, reminiscences, parents, brothers and sisters, associations,
 employment, politics, so that the rest never shame them afterward, nor assume to command
 them.

He is the answerer: 
What can be answer’d he answers—and what cannot be answer’d, he shows how
 it
 cannot
 be answer’d. 

3
A man is a summons and challenge; 
(It is vain to skulk—Do you hear that mocking and laughter? Do you hear the ironical
 echoes?) 

Books, friendships, philosophers, priests, action, pleasure, pride, beat up and down,
 seeking
 to
 give satisfaction;
He indicates the satisfaction, and indicates them that beat up and down also. 

Whichever the sex, whatever the season or place, he may go freshly and gently and safely,
 by
 day or
 by night; 
He has the pass-key of hearts—to him the response of the prying of hands on the
 knobs. 

His welcome is universal—the flow of beauty is not more welcome or universal than he
 is; 
The person he favors by day, or sleeps with at night, is blessed.

4
Every existence has its idiom—everything has an idiom and tongue; 
He resolves all tongues into his own, and bestows it upon men, and any man translates, and
 any
 man
 translates himself also; 
One part does not counteract another part—he is the joiner—he sees how they
 join. 

He says indifferently and alike, How are you, friend? to the President at his
 levee, 
And he says, Good-day, my brother! to Cudge that hoes in the sugar-field,
And both understand him, and know that his speech is right. 

He walks with perfect ease in the Capitol, 
He walks among the Congress, and one Representative says to another, Here is our equal,
 appearing
 and new. 

Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic, 
And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that he has follow’d
 the
 sea,
And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist, 
And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them; 
No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it, or has follow’d it, 
No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters there. 

The English believe he comes of their English stock,
A Jew to the Jew he seems—a Russ to the Russ—usual and near, removed from none. 

Whoever he looks at in the traveler’s coffee-house claims him, 
The Italian or Frenchman is sure, and the German is sure, and the Spaniard is sure, and
 the
 island
 Cuban is sure; 
The engineer, the deck-hand on the great lakes, or on the Mississippi, or St. Lawrence, or
 Sacramento, or Hudson, or Paumanok Sound, claims him. 

The gentleman of perfect blood acknowledges his perfect blood;
The insulter, the prostitute, the angry person, the beggar, see themselves in the ways of
 him—he strangely transmutes them, 
They are not vile any more—they hardly know themselves, they are so grown.