Whitman’s Sampler redux

Since I’m going back through the poems in my first book, here is my *final* revision of the book's first poem. Shout out to my boy T for his genius suggestion that I begin the book with this poem. It not only transformed the arc of the manuscript, but of my writing arc since that then. 

WHITMAN’S SAMPLER
a DJ Reneg8d remix

To begin with, take warning, I am . . . 

far different from what you suppose;
I do not ask any . . . delight, 

I swim in it as in a sea. 

Then the eyes close . . . 

and . . . speed forth to the darkness.
Mind not the old man 

beseeching the young man,
Entering but for a minute . . . 

see a sight beyond all the pictures 

and poems ever made,
ebb stung by the flow 

and flow stung by the ebb, 

love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching.
Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
O I think it is not for life I am chanting . . . 

my chant of lovers
         . . . it must be for death . . .
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, 

and of the shore, and dark-color’d sea-rocks, 

and of hay in the barn, which too long 

I was offering to feed my soul.
And what I assume you shall assume;  

Stop this day and night with me, and
you shall possess the origin of all . . . 

But I do not talk of the beginning or the end,

held by this electric self out of the pride 

of which I utter poems.

I too but signify at the utmost 

a little wash’d-up drift, 

A few sands and dead leaves to gather, 

gather, and merge myself as part 

of this mystery—

here we stand

in the mystical moist night-air,

and from time to time, 

here, take this gift . . .