Poetry

Long, Too Long America by Walt Whitman

by 
Long, too long America,
  Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and
            prosperity only,
  But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing,
            grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
  And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse
            really are,
  (For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse
            really are?)

From Drum-taps, 1865

Creatures and Things

by 
That tiny creature there
the one having just alighted on my arm
and having just pierced my skin
and which is now drawing nourishment
from my very essence

How brave it is
how strong it is in its desire to survive
feeding from that which may end its own diminutive essence
with the slightest
indiscriminate flick of the finger

Aye, the power I possess
I, possessing over this tiny creature
nothing less than the determination
of its life
of its death

Surely, of its death

But why bother
Why not just let it be
For if I were to end its being
it would soon enough return
in the form of any other number of creatures
or things

Returning once again and forevermore
to feed on me
to suck away my life source
and make it its own