Robert Fleming

Walt Whitman's Song of Myself - excerpt

Body to Soul

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, 

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, 

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul. 

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? 

And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead? 

And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? 

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?

Robert Fleming Response

I seek to sing my soul

The peace doves, I love, flock, but I fail to flock to peace doves

I seek the secret to hear my silence

And release them and charge solely myself with my soul

I doubt that eating the soul of the sea shall find the sole in me

And still I fry sole fish to eat soul into my body

And I remove my socks to skip on my soles

And when my body is soot, I shall sing my soul