Annunciation: Les Enfants Entendent
(Ode to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass)
By Juan Romagosa
SMILES! Smiles! Smiles!
In the day, in company, smiles;
In the heavy air floating, floating, buoyed up by the wind;
Smiles – not a cloud darkening – all bright and shining;
Bright smiles on the mouths of raised heads:
- O who is that Spirit? that form in the light, with smiles?
What shapely mass is that, stretching, reaching there past the clouds?
…away, in the morn, as you fly, all looking –
O then the unloosen’d ocean,
Of smiles! smiles! smiles!