A child said, What is the grass?

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full
hands;
How could I answer the child?. . . .I do not know what it
is any more than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful
green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we
may see and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .the produced babe
of the vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the
same, I receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them;
It may be you are from old people and from women, and
from offspring taken soon out of their mother's laps,
And here you are the mother's laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old
mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues!
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths
for nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men
and women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring
taken soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
What do you think has become of the women and
children?

They are alive and well somewhere;
The smallest sprouts show there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait
at the end to arrest it,
And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward. . . .and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and
luckier.

by Walt Whitman

Loss and Regret

I just learned this morning that my former partner Susan Hager, 63, died suddenly at her home. She had been quite ill some years ago and had a kidney transplant donated by her assistant! If you want to read more about Susan's wonderful career look up: HagerSharp, Washington, DC. We have, within recent years, suffered what seems to be a growing number of untimely deaths among my cohort (people in their sixties) and it makes me regret every hour lost, every book unread, every concert missed, and most of all every friend not seen for a long time. The internet at once links us one to another, as I had always hoped. But it also cheapens the quality of the communication and lessens its emotional and intellectual content. My husband and I just watched all of the John Adams series produced by HBO. I also recently finished the Ron Chernow biography of Alexander Hamilton. One has to be struck by the ability of these correspondents to be literary, thoughtful, clever and prolific. All with a steel tipped quill!