What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (1)

Over the next 20 days or so I will be posting each segment of an extended poem I wrote in late 2006/early 2007 and recently tried to edit.

What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman?
(Salut au Monde)

1

Listen here! There's no reason to celebrate,
no rally for me, for I, no rallying to partake in.
No city bells and whistles, no falling confetti,
we still haven't won the World Series, no parade, no riots, no endless applause.

Rationalizing such a rally would be too much a task
and would involve too much tampering of the truth,
too little, too late, too excessive would that be.

But I can see little faint glow of that smiling sunset,
behind the zipper and beneath the belt;
the car tumbles to a stop on some cliff and shakes
and rattles and riots while the sun falls
and the stars rise and shine down on this,
this a celebration in itself, this backseat riot,
gardening of life and youth and long nights never returning home.