O kisses of sun and wind, tall fir-trees and
moss-covered rocks!
O
boundless joy of Nature on the mountain tops-coming back at last to you!
Wild songs in sight of the sea, wild dances
along the sands, glances of the risen moon,
echoes
of old old refrains coming down from unimagined times!
O
rolling through the air superb prophetic spirit of Man, pulse of divine health
equalising
the
universe, vast over all the world expanding spirit!
O joy of the liberated soul (finished
purpose and acquittal of civilisation), daring all things...
See! the divine mother goes forth with her
babe (all creation circles round)
-God dwells once more in a woman's womb;
friend
goes with friend, flesh cleaves to flesh, the path that rounds the universe.
O every day sweet and delicious food!
Kisses to the lips of sweet-smelling fruit and bread,
milk
and green herbs. Strong well-knit muscles, quick-healing glossy skin, body for
kisses all over!
Radiant health! to breathe, O joy! to
sleep, ah! never enough to be expressed!
For the taste of fruit ripening warm in the
sun, for the distant sight of the deep liquid sea!
For the sight of naked bodies of the
bathers, bathing by the hot sea-banks,
the pleasant consciousness of those who
are unashamed, the glance of their eyes,
the beautiful proud step of the human
animal on the sand;
For the touch of the air on my face or
creeping over my unclothed body, for the rustling sound of it in the trees,
and
the appearance of their tall stems springing so lightly from the earth!
Joy, joy and thanks for ever.
Copyright John Baker. Image may not be reproduced without permission.
During last
August (2008), a group of fifteen people sat in the ‘Sunny Room' at Laurieston
Hall in Scotland (a lovely upstairs room with a great intersecting sun and moon
painted upon the ceiling), reading together poetry of Edward Carpenter and Walt
Whitman - part of a Gay Men's Week of the Edward Carpenter Community. Together
we were amazed and moved at the strength and directness of the poems, with their
tender intimate invocation of comradeship and physicality. Among them this
excerpt from Carpenter's Towards Democracy that, for me, captures so
wonderfully and with Whitmanesque inspiration the release and wellbeing that
the 37 year old Carpenter was finally able to experience on coming to the rural
community at Bradway and to a life lived close to the land. The sense of his ‘coming
home' to himself, to his body and to Nature. The embodied spirituality of the
divine encountered through a sensuous, sexually charged celebration of being
alive.
Later that same
week in Scotland, I was able to catch with my camera a moment, early one sunny morning
and just before the swimmers plunged into the icy loch, that seemed to capture
something of Carpenter's poem.
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