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Interlude: Night Swimmers

from Shifting Times by Arthur Durkee

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Interlude: Night Swimmers

Walt Whitman, from "Leaves of Grass"

. . . It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy,
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.

I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming
naked through the eddies of the sea,
His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he
strikes out with courageous arms, he urges
himself with his legs,
I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes,
I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash
him head-foremost on the rocks.

What are you doing, you ruffianly red-trickled waves?
Will you kill the courageous giant? Will you kill him in the prime of his middle age?

Steady and long he struggles,
He is baffled, banged, bruised—he holds out while
his strength holds out,
The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood —
they bear him away, they roll him, swing him, turn him,
His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies,
it is continually bruised on rocks,
Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse. . . .

("Night Swimmers" is the provisional title of an extended poem in "Leaves of Grass." The title does not appear in every edition, and the poem itself changed somewhat between early and later editions. This is a long passage that was one of the poems of Whitman's that first caught and held my imagination, lo these many years of reading his poems.)

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from Shifting Times, released July 6, 2019

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Arthur Durkee Ann Arbor, Michigan

Arthur Durkee is a composer & songwriter who records & performs on Chapman Stick, bass, analog modular synths, bamboo & wood flutes, keys, frame drums, and voice. He has won awards for composed, notated music as well as for his recordings, & is a published poet, & designer & illustrator. ... more

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