“Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you may be my poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear.
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you.”
More from Walt Whitman
“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
“When I give, I give myself.”
“I am not to speak to you—I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone, I…”
“I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest.”