And go out through a thousand miles of dead grass.
Mind like a floating wide cloud,
Sunset like the parting of old acquaintances
Who bow over their clasped hands at a distance.
Our horses neigh to each other
as we are departing.
"Dear friend whoever you are take this kiss,/ I give it especially to you, do not forget me," Whitman declared in one of his songs of parting, "So Long!" (He also boldly announced, "Camerado, this is no book,/ Who touches this touches a man.") I'd like to close with lines of farewell from the 24th section of the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass.
Whitman was unabashed about addressing and embracing each stranger, each one of us, as a dear familiar, about imagining the exchange between poet and his unknown reader as a form of creative love. I leave these lines to each individual reader, to each one of you, as a fleeting final gesture of our shared participation in poetry.
Lift me close to your face till I whisper,
What you are holding is in reality no book, nor part of a book,
It is a man, flushed and full-bodied -- it is I -- So long!
We must separate -- Here! take from my lips this kiss,
Whoever you are, I give it especially to you;
So long -- and I hope we shall meet again.
(Robert Hass's translations of Basho appear in his book "The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, & Issa." Ecco. Copyright © 1994 by Robert Hass. Ezra Pound's version of Li Po can be found in "Ezra Pound, Translations." New Directions. Copyright © 1926, 1954, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1963 by Ezra Pound. Whitman's lines can be found in "Walt Whitman, Poetry and Prose." Library of America. Copyright © 1996 by Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.)
