Looking At Walt Whitman: Looking At Myself

Seize by a sudden burst of loneliness, I pick up Walt Whitman. I can look elsewhere in modern poetry and I will still find Walt Whitman there. I see him in the poetry of Wallace Stevens and Hart Crane among the Americans. I see him in the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz among the Latin Americans. I see him, most profoundly, in the poetry of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. But when I look into a mirror I don't see Walt Whitman or any of his followers. I don't see anything. Not even myself.

How I long for silence. Let me escape Alice. Let me escape into the poem of D. H. Lawrence:

The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on

And the horse looks at him in silence.

They are so silent, they are in another world.

To read literature is to escape from the world. To read literature is to escape into silence.