This is a wonderful conversation, but to save some time I’ve set the link to start about halfway in just before the main event.
Edward Norton and Stephen Colbert agree on their mutual love of Walt Whitman, someone who, Colbert says, is not read nearly enough anymore.
As a long time worshipful follower of the Good Gray Poet, this was like an unexpected lightning stroke from heaven.
We’re at the equinox, so as good a time as any to repost an excerpt from one of Whitman’s greatest – “Song of the Rolling Earth”.
I did this last some years ago on an Autumn Equinox, and had kind of forgotten, but since it’s Spring Equinox tomorrow, seems appropriate.
I think we need it now as much as ever.
Song of the Rolling Earth:
I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall
be complete,
The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who
remains jagged and broken.
I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate
those of the earth,
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the
theory of the earth,
No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account,
unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the
earth.
I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which
responds love,
It is that which contains itself, which never invites and never
refuses.
I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words,
All merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings
of the earth,
Toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths
of the earth,
Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print can-
not touch.
I swear I see what is better than to tell the best,
It is always to leave the best untold.
When I undertake to tell the best I find I cannot,
My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots,
My breath will not be obedient to its organs,
I become a dumb man.
~Walt Whitman