The Birth of Aphrodite

[jporter]

Me and mine, loose windrows, little corpses,
Froth, snowy white, and bubbles,
(See, from the dead lips ooze exuding at last,
See, the prismatic colors glistening and rolling,)
Tufts of straw, sand fragments,
Bouy'd hither from many moods, one contradicting the other,
>From the storm, the long calm, the darkness, the swell,
Musing pondering, a breath, a briny tear, a dab of liquid or soil,
Up just as much out of fathomless workings fermented and thrown,
A limp blossom or two, torn, just as much over waves floating, drifted
        at random,
Just as much for us that sobbing dirge of Nature,
Just as much whence we come that blare of the cloud-trumpets,
We, capricious, brought hither we know not whence, spread out before
        you,
You up there walking or sitting,
Whoever you are, we too lie in drifts at your feet.

[From- "As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life" _Leaves of Grass_]