94
PARTISAN REVIEW
A gigantic beauty ofa stallion, fresh andresponsive to my caresses,
Headhigh in the forehead, wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy andsupple, tat! dusting the ground,
Eyesfull ofsparkling wickedness, earsfinely cut, flexibly moving.
His nostrzls dt!ate as my heels embrace him.
His well-but!t limbs tremble with pleasure as we race aroundand
return
Thus again the sexual leads
to
the visionary, in this case
to
the famous section
33, where the poet is "afoot in my vision," recalling the first lines of "The
Sleepers .' ,
This vision, like those in "The Sleepers," includes the negative, for the
poet is not able
to
separate sexuality from guilt. Death images are pervasive
and culminate in his vision of himself as a crucified victim, in section 38. His
racial memory includes all experience, and all suffering. He becomes a sacri–
ficial victim, taking upon himself the sins of the world, and thereby assuring
the safety and the sleep of his beloved. Reborn like the resurrected Christ, he
can begin his journey across the continent-' 'Ohio and Massachusetts and
Virginia and Wisconsin and New York and New Orleans and Texas and
Montreal and San Francisco and Charleston and Savannah and Mexico" -and
beyond . He recognizes that his poetic mission will be carried on by his eleves,
the poet 's disciples, who can learn the meaning of his words only if they have
followed out the sexual patterns of the poem and have in fact become the
poet's lovers. He is now awake but lets the other sleep:
Sleep-I and they keep guard all night,
Not doubt, not decease shall dare to lay finger upon you.
He carries his message of salvation, his Christ-like role to the world and feels
certain of the correcrness of his mission. Thus assured, he awakens the lover in
section 44 .
"It
is time
to
explain myself-let us stand up ." He realizes that he
has escaped the trap of reality through the acceptances, including that hardest
of all to accept, Death. But once he has accepted it, and acceptance was
already implied in section 8, he is already out of time and out of space
(to
quote Poe, who sometimes seems surprisingly like Whitman). Having
achieved that state of ascension, he can now say good-by
to
the lover, recog–
nizing his transitoriness. The recognition of death means that no earthly love
is final; that all lovers will part; and so he parts from his lover, prepared
to
give himself to the world rather than to anyone individual. He cannot take
this lover with him, but must ask him to make his own journey.
