Walt Whitman in His Time-And Ours

I speak the password primeval I give the sign of democracy; By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms. Through me many long dumb voices, Voices of the interminable generations of slaves, Voices of prostitutes and of deformed persons, Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs, Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion, And of the threads that connect the stars-and of wombs and of the fatherstuff, And of the rights of them the others are down upon, Of the trivial and flat and foolish and despised, Of fog in the air and beetles rolling balls of dung. Through me forbidden voices, Voices of sexes and lustsvoices veil'd, and I remove the veil, Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigured. 4

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