Continuity (about writing poems)

I read Whitman

His writing is complicated

Full of ideas that seem arcane

But it’s simply my lack of understanding

In “Kosmos” he explains the house of humanity

“Who constructing … not for a day

but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations

The past, the future, dwelling there,

like space, inseparable together”

This I vaguely understood

This I might have experienced

But the continuity of humanity

Seemed to be disjointed to me

But in those 11 lines

In those 180 words

He explains, he remarks

On this continuity

I feel as if from 100 years ago

He is speaking to me

Clarifying my jumbled thoughts

Telling me of the Kosmos