If we are at war let the orchards show it, let the pear and fig fall prior to their time, let the radios die and the hounds freeze over their meat.
Like scribes, they lean closer, watching the old men he blessed for long life stand and listen.
[…]
Walt Whitman was a poet of hope and encouragement, but his greatest poem is bleak at heart, ripped bloody, and shredded with despair. He was our verbal cheerleader, our avid egoist as well as our most enthusiastic inclusionist.
