I sing the body electric,
That I am is of my body,
Of all that I have had, I have had nothing except through my body,
And what I should be I knew I should be of my body,
What belongs to me, that it does not yet spread in the spread of the universe, I owe to my body.
And what identity I am, I owe to my body,
My body inevitably united, part to part,
And made out of a thousand diverse contributions one identity—
I comprehend no better life than the life of my body.

Illustrious the senses, the body,
All comes by the body, man’s or woman’s.
The complete human form is God’s highest work and perfect masterpiece,
The epitome of all, the universal emblem.
The body itself balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

O the magnet! the flesh over and over!
To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color’d flesh,
To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large,
That wondrous house, more than all the old high-spired cathedrals!

I dote on myself,
There is that lot of me and all so luscious,
Each part and tag of me is a miracle,
I do not believe anyone possesses a more perfect or enamour’d body than mine.
(I used to be more proud when I went to the bath, and someone would say that I was the finest-shaped youngster in the bath, than I have been of all my literary admiration since.)

But O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you.
Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and times all over the earth?

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Every part able, active, receptive, a father, a mother,
Without shame or the need of shame.
The theologians teach that the body is the sinful setting of the immortal soul,
But he who travels with that which is ashamed of the body travels straight for the slopes of dissolution.

I wish men to be proud of their bodies,
To look upon the body as a thing of beauty, too holy to be abused by vice and debauchery.
Those organs and acts tacitly yielded as vile are not in reality vile,
They too are to be mentioned and faced, and openly treated in literature—
The head well-grown proportion’d and plumb, and the bowels and joints proportion’d and plumb,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest.

Human bodies are words, myriads of words;
A true composition in words, like some vast living body, returns the human body, male or female,
Loving that which is necessary to make it complete.
The other poets write with reference to the costume of the body, or, at most, with reference to the body, costumed. But I—who, having consider’d the body, finds all its organs and parts good—write my poems with reference to the perfect body, divine, irrespective of costumes; in it I have eternal faith. In the best poems re-appears the body, man’s or woman, well-shaped, natural, gay—the sight of the perfect body, looked into and through, as if it were transparent and of pure glass, and now reported.

The most perfect composition, best beloved by men and women, slights no part of the body,
I sing a poem in which is minutely described the whole particulars and ensemble of a first-rate healthy human body—the female equally with the male,
My contention is for the whole corpus,
Not one member—not a leg, an arm, a belly, alone,
But the entire corpus, nothing left out of the account;
I am always curious in just such points—complexion, the color of a man’s hair, eyes, voice, legs, arms, trunk, port—all that goes to make him himself.

The words of the body,
The divine list for myself or you or for anyone making,
The index from head to foot:

Head, hair—the float and odor of hair,
Long hair, crispy hair, the pale yellow and white of his hair,
The shape of his head,
In this head the all-baffling brain, in its folds inside the skull-frame.

What created thing can surpass that masterpiece of physical perfection, the human face?
The expression of the face balks account,
This common curtain of the face contain’d in me for me, in you for you, in each for each,
This heart’s geography’s map, this limitless small continent, this soundless sea,
This bending rough-cut mask,
This glaze of God’s serenest purest sky,
This film of Satan’s seething pit,
This drama of the whole—
Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears, O heaven!
The passionate teeming plays this curtain hid—
This globe, this subtler astronomic orb than sun or moon, than Jupiter, Venus, Mars,
This condensation of the universe,
Nay here the only universe,
Here the idea, all in this mystic handful wrapt.

The eye—that soul of the face!
My windows my eyes—life-lit eyes, gray eyes,
The immeasurable meaning of his black eyes,
Who has not look’d forth from the windows the eyes for nothing.
Waking or sleeping of the lids,
Drop and tympan of the ears,
Temples, nostrils, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
Mustache, manly beard, (the beards of the young men glisten’d with wet,)
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles—
The blood show’d like scarlet through the clear-brown skin of his face.

But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees.

Ample pliant neck, neck-slue, (my head slues round on my neck,)
Scapula, strong shoulders, hind-shoulders, pliant backbone,
Breast that presses against other breasts—breast-bone, flakes of breast-muscle,
The bosoms of women, the teats, nipples, breast-milk,
Curling hair of the breast, scented herbage of ribb’d breast, tomb-leaves, body-leaves growing up above death,
(Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests,
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms.)

Polish’d and perfect limbs, good-sized arms and legs,
These limbs, cunning in tendon and nerve,
Armpit, elbow-socket, wrist-joints, brown hands, finger-joints—
My joints, the limberest joints on earth and the sternest joints on earth,
The narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery.

Belly, (white bellies bulge to the sun,) the womb,
Crotch and vine, silk-thread, man-root, love-root, man-balls—that of myself without which I were nothing,
The beauty of the hips, hip-sockets, and thence downward toward the knees,
Leg-fibres, bend of legs, knee-pan, ankles, instep, toe-joints.

And wonders within there yet:
The bones and the marrow in the bones,
The lung-sponges, the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The circling rivers the breath, respiration and inspiration,
The smoke of my own breath, breathing it in and out,
The stomach-sac, digestion, the bowels sweet and clean.

Heart valves, the beating of my heart—
There swells and jets a heart, with terrible throes under its ribs,
Beating to jet the all-alike and innocent blood,
The thin red jellies within you or within me,
The curious systole and diastole within, which will one day cease.

All the belongings of my or your body or of anyone’s body, male or female,
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul.

 NEXT: HEALTH