Five poems by Karen Knight on Walt Whitman

His Own Best Critic

He was his own best critic
when bookstores refused
to carry Leaves
across the threshold.

Newspapers turned his life
into a parody
accused him of bringing
the slop pail into the parlour
and women witheld
opening the book
fearing contamination

he continued writing
anonymous reviews
comparing himself
to Homer and Shakespeare
announcing a great philosopher
a democratic poet
an American bard at last.

Now Leaves of Grass lies around
in a Long Island bank vault
waiting for light
or a President to wrap one
of the remaining known survivors
in pale green paper
to give his mistress
and the wife.

© Karen Knight

For the Sunday papers

Typical of an ailing poet
to stay out too late
gazing at the sun
after it had touched base
with the horizon.

Now he strains to hear
his housekeeper’s doves
trying to soothe this death room.

He hopes for rain,
not a heavy fall
just enough to freshen up
the reporters outside.
But he’ll meet their deadlines
for this Saturday evening
around 6.pm.

*Walt Whitman died on 26th March, 1892 in his Mickle Street home in Camden, New Jersey at 6.pm.

© Karen Knight

Public Viewing
(March 30th, 1892)

There will be a public viewing of the body
at Mickle Boulevard
from 11.am. until 2.pm.

Old neighbours are welcome
along with the curious
and laborers in their lunch hour.

If one wishes to continue on
to the cemetery
follow the carriage
to the poet’s mausoleum
where there will be an open tent
for special guests and speakers.

Flowers to be handed to the guard.

Weather forecast, sunny and mild.

© Karen Knight

Those Worrisome Brothers

To have a brother
an Inspector of Gas Pipes
in the City of Camden.

To have a brother
with tuberculosis
and an alcohol problem.

To have a brother
go mad with syphilis
caught from an Irish prostitute.

To have a brother
who continuously ate
until he passed out.

To have a brother
shot through the cheek
at Fredericksburg, Virginia.

To be a brother
who left home
to find other brothers.

© Karen Knight

You were loved, Walt

By Thomas Lindley, 1st Pennsylvania Cavalry, when you gave him a large apple and told him you’d roast it for him in the morning.

When you helped carry the wounded off the boat and thanked them for coming all the way from Charlottesville.

On a hot Washington summer when you walked the unpaved streets carrying an umbrella and a fan to protect your suit from dust clouds raised by passing troops and wagons.

Singing old songs around campfires, eating green corn out of tin pans, trusting the drunken soldiers to light your way home by pistol fire.

When you straightened bits of broken boards, pieces of barrel staves that represented dead officers’ graves.

By the men you calmed by saying that life is like the weather, you have to take what comes.

When you wrote each bed number in a notebook and every bed number had a name, a face and a home address.