A Whitman noun-collage from the LIRR
[Whitman's Songs of Myself #15:] The pure contralto sings in the organ loft, The carpenter dresses his plank, the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp, The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner, [...] The mate stands braced in the whale-boat, lance and harpoon are ready, The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches, The deacons are ordain’d with cross’d hands at the altar, The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel, The farmer stops by the bars as he walks on a First-day loafe and looks at the oats and rye, The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirm’d case, (He will never sleep any more as he did in the cot in his mother’s bed-room;) [...]; The malform’d limbs are tied to the surgeon’s table, What is removed drops horribly in a pail; The quadroon girl is sold at the auction-stand, the drunkard nods by the bar-room stove, The machinist rolls up his sleeves, the policeman travels his beat, the gate-keeper marks who pass, The young fellow drives the express-wagon, (I love him, though I do not know him;) [...] The western turkey-shooting draws old and young, some lean on their rifles, some sit on logs, Out from the crowd steps the marksman, takes his position, levels his piece; The groups of newly-come immigrants cover the wharf or levee, [...] The bugle calls in the ball-room, the gentlemen run for their partners, the dancers bow to each other, The youth lies awake in the cedar-roof’d garret and harks to the musical rain, The Wolverine sets traps on the creek that helps fill the Huron, The squaw wrapt in her yellow-hemm’d cloth is offering moccasins and bead-bags for sale, The connoisseur peers along the exhibition-gallery with half shut eyes bent sideways, As the deck-hands make fast the steamboat the plank is thrown for the shore-going passengers, The young sister holds out the skein while the elder sister winds it off in a ball, and stops now and then for the knots, The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne her first child, The clean-hair’d Yankee girl works with her sewing-machine or in the factory or mill, The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter’s lead flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign painter is lettering with blue and gold, The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread, The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him, The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions, [...]
Location 2835Eastward travelers scurry back to their homes, drunk sleepy and full; The conductor checks in strangers to his traveling home, amazed at faces forever anew; The passengers giggle and holler and look down to find anything they may need; Trains haul through fields of sleepers all sleeping through machine-cooled June; The trees asleep see no difference between you and the spiders; Two-legged travelers all scrawny from wheels on their luggage, wheels in their sneakers, wheels take them everywhere; A fan bursting with zeal yells “Mexico!” for soccer, while the city’s baseball team slogs through a meltdown; While anchormen proclaim the war’s finally over, the oil will be plenty; No man, woman, or child trusts their ears, eyes or tongue; The executive chief has demons check his mail; Through grandmother’s window the street’s always and never changing; With half-dressed kids howling for nothing; With pizza shop owners deaf from their speakers; With basketball teams dribbling balls to the bars; With gangs flashing boulevards with one-handed wheelies, because death like everything is a joke; As the funeral home locks up for the night; And pizza men fill backseats with cheese for the night; And the corner-house couple tries to conceive again for the night; A Lutheran priest tonight keeps the red lights on; Ten thousand souls all weep joy at the commotion; Landlord asleep as I sneak up into my home.