A Passage I Like

 Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Walt Whitman - 1819-1892

1

Flood-tide below me! I watch you face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose.
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

2

The impalpable sustenance of me from all things, at all hours of the day;
The simple, compact, well-join'd scheme—myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme:
The similitudes of the past, and those of the future;
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings— on the walk in the street, and the passage over the river;
The current rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me far away;
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them;
The certainty of others—the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from shore to shore;
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide;
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east;
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an hour high;
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide.

 

When I read “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,”  I actually feel tossed back and forth on the currents, experience going out and coming home, feel the connection to individuals across time. If anyone makes me feel one with the world, it is Walt Whitman. He pulls me in (and pushes me out) with the repetition of words, repetition of sounds, cadence of language, metaphor and simile. He conjures up the details of sights and sounds that connect the passengers in his time, in our time, in future times, “fifty years hence, one hundred years hence, so many hundreds years hence.” That “h” sound is a hushed secret that inhabits the person of Whitman, all before him and all after him. We are simultaneously individuals/ masses in a specific time and individuals/ masses connected through all time. Whitman expresses the continuation of life, the sharing of lives. He draws “impalpable sustenance . . . from all things.” We, like our experiences, are “strung together like beads in a string” “every one disintegrated, yet part of the scheme.” Reading “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” is a religious experience for me, one I can comfortably connect to and share with you...

Marsha H.

Oct. 2020