The world is so topsy turvy, so afraid to love, so afraid to demonstrate, so good, so respectable. Any demonstration between men is always misjudged; people come to conclusions about it. When they see two people or more people who really, greatly, wholly care for each other and say so—when they see such people they wonder and are incredulous or suspicious or defamatory, just as if they had somehow been the victims of an outrage.
They know nothing, there is nothing to be known, nothing except what might just as well be known. Yet they shake their wise heads—they meet, gossip, generate slander—the whole caboodle of liars and fools.

Long I was held by the life that exhibits itself,
By what is done in the houses or the streets, or in company,
The usual pleasures and aims, the standards hitherto publish’d, 
The intercourse to which all conform, and which the writers celebrate,
Which too long I was offering to feed my soul.

But I will escape from the sham that was proposed to me,
I have long enough stifled and choked.
No longer abash’d, for in this secluded spot I can respond as I would not dare elsewhere,
I am determin’d to unbare this broad breast of mine,
In paths untrodden, I proceed for all who are or have been young men,
To tell the secret of my nights and days,
To celebrate the untold and carefully concealed life.

Escaped from all the standards hitherto publish’d,
Clear to me now standards not yet publish’d,
Clear to me that my soul, that the soul of the man I speak for, rejoices in comrades,
In the high-towering love of comrades.

Resolv’d to sing no songs today but those of manly attachment,
I will sound myself and comrades only,
I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love,
I will raise with it immortal reverberations.
Carols vibrating through the air I leave for comrades and lovers,
I will never again utter a call, only their call,
To celebrate the need of the love of comrades—
For who but I should be the poet of comrades?

Here the frailest leaves of me and yet my strongest lasting,
Here I shade and hide my thoughts, I myself do not expose them,
And yet they expose me more than all my other poems,
For now I know the life which does not exhibit itself but which contains all the rest,
I know what it is for one man to meet another,
What personal contact means,
The magnetism of being present with your man.

I will give an example to lovers to take permanent shape and will,
Bequeathing hence types of athletic love,
I will establish without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument,
The institution of the dear love of comrades,
The most copious and close companionship of men.

What think you I take my pen in hand to record?
Merely two simple men I saw today on the pier in the midst of the crowd,
Parting the parting of dear friends.
The one to remain hung on the other’s neck and passionately kiss’d him,
While the one to depart tightly prest the one to remain in his arms.

Under present arrangements, the love and comradeship of a woman, of his wife, however welcome, however complete, does not and cannot satisfy the grandest requirements of a manly soul for love and comradeship. The man he loves, he often loves with more passionate attachment than he ever bestows on any woman, even his wife. Is it that the growth of love needs the free air, the seasons, perhaps more wildness, more rudeness?

It is a singular feature in men that to simply confess a love is not enough. There must be some concrete manifestation of it.
Now along the pondside, collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander,
Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near me,
Indicating to each one what he shall have, giving something to each—
Here, lilac, with a branch of pine, here, some moss,
Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage.

And here what I now draw from the water, talk’d to here by tongues aromatic,
This, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this calamus-root shall,
I will give of it, but only to them that love as I myself am capable of loving;
Interchange it youths with each other!
Let none render it back!

Calamus is a Latin word; I like it much. It is to me, for my intentions, indispensable—the sun revolves about it, it is a timber of the ship. Calamus—often called sweet flag—is the very large and aromatic grass, or rush, growing by margins of  water-ponds in the valleys. You will know it by the root, which is really the only way to know it—has a thick bulby root—stretches out like the fingers spread.
But the ethereal sense of the term, as used in my book, arises from calamus presenting the biggest and hardiest kind of spears of grass, about three feet high—the largest leaves of grass known!—profuse, rich, noble, upright, emotional—and their fresh, aquatic, pungent bouquet.
Yet I often say to myself about “Calamus,” perhaps it means more or less than what I thought myself—means different. Perhaps I don’t know what it all means—perhaps never did know. 

Today I go consort with nature’s darlings, tonight too,
I share the midnight orgies of young men, robust, friendly;
Robust chants of young men—health chants—joy chants,
Chants inclusive—wide reverberating chants—
Sound out, voices of young men!
The echoes ring with our indecent calls.
I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me.

Yet comes one—the young man of Mannahatta, the celebrated rough—picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am.
Some are baffled, but that one is not—that one knows me,
I love him, though I do not know him.

Passing stranger, lover and perfect equal!
To you whoe’er you are—a look—the glances of my eyes,
These burin’d eyes that swept the daylight, flashing to you to pass to future time.
As we flit by each other, simple, spontaneous, curious, two souls interchanging,
(Only souls understand souls,)
You do not know how longingly I look upon you.
Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos.

It seems, after all, strangers that we were until this moment, that we were not strangers either, in fact, but old acquaintances,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
You must be he I was seeking.

If you passing meet me and desire to speak to me,
Why should you not speak to me? and why should I not speak to you?
Yet I am not to speak to you—I might tell how I like you, but cannot,
And might tell what it is in me and what it is in you, but cannot,
I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

Just possibly with you on a high hill,
(First watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares,)
Or else by stealth in some wood for trial,
Or back of a rock in the open air,
Behold me, hear my voice, approach,
(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.)
Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,
Be not afraid of my body.
Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you,
Touch me with your lips as I touch those I love,
With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss,
For I am the new husband and I am the comrade.

A sudden memory-flash comes back, I know not why—
Remember you surging Manhattan’s crowds?
There in the crowds stood I, and singled you out with attachment,
We but look’d on each other,
When lo! more than all the gifts of the world you gave me—
The memory of only one look—
And I crowded your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.
I know not why, but I loved you,
I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections,
And to discover you by the like in you.

Picking out here one that I love, and choosing to go with him on brotherly terms,
I have found him who loves me, as I him in perfect love.
I am to go with him I love—a man, every inch of him!
A great big, sturdy, hearty, full-blooded, everyday, divinely generous working man,
A natural prince, tender, sweet, and magnetic—
And he is to go with me.

Earth, my likeness,
Though you look so impassive, ample and spheric there,
I now suspect that is not all;
I now suspect there is something fierce in you eligible to burst forth,
For an athlete is enamour’d of me,
And I enamour’d of him,
Toward him there is something fierce and terrible in me eligible to burst forth.

Not heat flames up and consumes, more than the flames of me, full of animal-fire,
Consuming, burning for his love whom I love.
I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening to consume me,
I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires,
I will give them complete abandonment.

The one who loves me is jealous of me, and withdraws me from all but love,
With the rest I dispense,
I sever from what I thought would suffice me, for it does not,
It is now empty and tasteless to me,
I heed knowledge, and the grandeur of the states, and the example of heroes, no more.

When I heard how my name had been receiv’d with plaudits in the capitol,
And else when I caroused, or when my plans were accomplished,
Still I was not happy.
But when I thought how my dear friend my lover was on his way coming, O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the next at evening came my friend,
And that night the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast—and that night I was happy—
I, extoller of those that sleep in each others’ arms,
Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved!

Recorders ages hence! I will tell you what to say of me:
Publish my name and hang up my picture as that of the tenderest lover,
The friend the lover’s portrait, of whom his friend his lover was fondest—
It is to be enough for each of us that we are together.

In a barroom around the stove, a crowd of workmen and drivers late of a winter night,
Amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and oath and smutty jest, the drunkard nods by the barroom stove,
And I unremark’d seated in a corner,
A youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder;
We are those two natural and nonchalant persons,
We two, content, happy in being together,
Speaking little, perhaps not a word.

Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law.
Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

O now I triumph—and you shall also, O sharer of my roving life,
Who oft as he saunter’d the streets curv’d with his arm the shoulder of his friend,
While the arm of his friend rested upon him also,
Whose happiest days were far away, rambling in lanes and country fields, in woods, on hills.
O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides,
He and another wandering hand in hand,
They twain apart from other men.

O to haste firm holding—to haste, haste on with me,
Two together! In the air, in the woods, over fields,
We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
The one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as unwilling to leave,
And ever at parting kiss me lightly on the lips with robust love,
And I on the crossing of the street or on the ship’s deck give a kiss in return.

O camerado close! O one more desirer and lover!
O you whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you,
As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you,
O wholesome pleasure—O you and me at last, and us two only.
If I worship one thing more than another,
Loving lounger in my winding paths, it shall be you!
Hands I have taken—face I have kiss’d—mortal I have touch’d, it shall be you!

As disembodied or another born,
I ascend, I float in the regions of your love O man,
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consolation,
Floating and basking upon heaven’s lake,
While we bask, we two together,
While we two keep together.

As I lay with my head in your lap, camerado,
The confession I made I resume:
Full of wickedness, I—of many a smutch’d deed reminiscent—of worse deeds capable.
Yet I look composedly upon nature,
Drink day and night the joys of life,
And await death with perfect equanimity,
Because of my tender and boundless love for him I love day and night,
And because of his boundless love for me.

NEXT:  SEXUAL LOVE

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